Friday's Thoughts: Debates Round-up, Christmas Songs, and Star Wars

By Kit

My last post before Christmas. What a year its been, trying to consistently write a weekly post for this site. It's been difficult, especially with schoolwork but I'm glad for the positive responses I've gotten from you folks.

Now, let's get on with the show.

Tuesday's Debate We had a debate this week. The expected (and possibly hoped for) Trump/Cruz clash did not occur. Cruz deflected from attacking Trump and Trump, interestingly, did likewise. Instead the big clashes were Bush/Trump and, the highlights for me, Cruz/Rubio.

So let's score the Top 8 Candidates.

Trump: Trump was Trump. Though slightly less than usual but still Trump with outlandish calls to kill the families of terrorists (WTF?!) and issuing proposals that, as Jon Gabriel of Ricochet once pointed out, nearly always seem to involve bigger government. He is a populist strongman with a nationalist streak in the vein of Huey Long.

He is also a clueless clown, flubbing a question on the nuclear triad. True, I didn’t know what it was but… I am not running for President of the United States.

However, he did gain a few points with me by promising not to run as an independent. For now, at least. He made He was at zero before (if not in the negatives) so it was not a huge bump. He is still at the bottom for me.

Cruz: Did ok but he made a flap, possibly fatal one (but fatal missteps are declared far more often than they occur) when he said he never supported legalization of illegals when in fact in 2013 he proposed a bill to do just that. He claims it was a poison pill but he advocated on several networks, including for some time after it failed. National Review is giving him hell on this, and, to a certain extent, Fox News as well, while his supporters are trying to craft him as some kind of Machiavellian genius —who lies to stop bills he doesn’t like.

Carson: Still not ready for primetime. Should be running for Congress. Next!

Rubio: My pick as “winner”, even though there really was not a standout winner. But I found myself leaning back to him. He took on an attack on immigration and handled it well. And, no, he did not “dodge” the immigration question, unless dodging means giving a clear and well-crafted answer that clearly outlines a position you don't like in a possibly appealing way. You can say you don't trust him, you can say you don't like his answer, but it was not evasive.

I have some problems with him, true, but he never seems off his game. He has handled himself incredibly well in the debates. He always knows his stuff. That requires some homework. In this primary system, that is sadly a huge plus. He also looked a bit older than in previous debates, where he unfortunately had a Chairman of the College Republicans look to him.

Christie: Rubbed me the wrong way. His butting in during the Rubio/Cruz debate on NSA and attacking them for “just discussing” instead of making decisions shad, to me at least, a stench of pro-executive, anti-legislature strongman Mussoliniism to it. Though it appears to have played well with most people.

Carly: Ok. Her campaign for VP continues apace. Her failed attempt to pull a Christie during one of the Rubio/Cruz clashes was rather sad.

Jeb: Had his best night but that is not saying much considering how poor his nights have been so far.

Kasich: Who? Oh, right, him. He was… there.

He kind of seemed like the Larry Gillmore of the night. He was there.

Any thoughts?


Bad Christmas Songs

First, my least favorite: “Last Christmas”, “Christmas Shoes”, “Grandma Got Run over by a Reinder”, and “Do They Know It’s Christmas” are at the top of my hate list. “Christmas Shoes” is probably my least loathed of them because I rarely heard it but, yeah, its awful. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” is annoying and “Do They Know Its Christmas” is “LOOK AT HOW CARING WE ARE” twaddle. At least “Last Christmas” has a cheesy, 80s so-bad-its-good vibe to it, even if it is annoying.

Good songs? Pretty much any of the classics and the hymns. There are some mediocrities such as “Rock a-Round the Clock” and “All I Want For Christmas” but for the most part this season is full of good songs; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, “Jingle Bells”, “Silver Bells”, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”,

Your favorites? Least favorites?

Star Wars

Well Star Wars premieres tonight, I plan to see it tomorrow. Anyone who dares spoil it for me will be force-choked. But not to death. No, for death they will be tossed bound and gagged into a Sarlacc pit to be digested over the course of a thousand years.

Merry Christmas.

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Thoughts On Cuba

Obama seems to be casting about almost randomly for anything that will create a legacy for him. Too bad for him that he doesn't understand what the American public actually cares about, nor is he apparently capable of working well enough with others to get help in finding a legacy. Oh well. His latest effort, loosening relationships with Cuba, is a good idea, but ultimately pretty meaningless toward his future. Here are my thoughts...

This Is Long Overdue

I get that some conservatives are stuck in the paranoid world of Cold War politics, but loosening relationships with Cuba is something that should have been done long ago. Why? Because history has shown that the only way to change a regime, short of military occupation, is economic liberalization. Yep. Sanctions don't work. For sixty years now, we have done our best to change Cuba's government by imposing strong economic sanctions on Cuba. The idea was to cripple their economy so the government would collapse and capitalists (and mobsters) could return to Cuba and exploit its economic qualities, e.g. cigars, sugar, tourism, gambling, etc. Despite our best efforts, those sanctions resulted in jack... nothing... squat... zip... nada. Why? Because sanctions don't work.

Indeed, look at the history of sanctions and you won't find a single instance where they worked... ever. And the reason they don't work is really quite simple. First, sanctions allow the sanctioned country to create an us versus them mentality which makes enduring the sanctions into a matter of pride and loyalty. That keeps people from attacking the regime over the sanctions. It also lets the sanctioned regime blame their economic and political failures on the sanctioning country. This becomes the perfect excuse for all failures. Third, sanctions just don't work because they will always be overcome by the power of human ingenuity. You will see this time and again. In fact, interestingly, despite a total embargo and continual bombing, Nazi Germany actually produced more war material at the end of the war than it did even at the height of its power.

Heck, conservatives get this when it comes to places like Iran and China etc. Yet, when it comes to Cuba, somehow nostalgia kicks in and seems to make conservatives stupid... "James Bond can't be black! And by God, we'll get those Cubans in another couple hundred years!"

At the same time, economic liberalization has crushed communist regime after communist regime. The communist regimes in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and Vietnam all fell apart when their people got a taste of economic freedom and the joys wealth can bring. Sure, China and Vietnam are still technically run by the communists, but their control is little more than an illusion today, with their leaders understanding that maintaining their massive growth rates are the only thing keeping them from being tossed out by their own people. In the Soviet Union and East Europe, the inability of those regimes to deliver wealth led to their overnight collapses and replacement by regimes that shut down the secret police and opened the stock markets. Was it always perfect? Hardly, but it was fast and furious and fundamentally transforming. Sanctions, on the other hand, never even started the ball rolling.

Cuba will be the same thing. As American money and businesses pour in, a middle and upper class will form within weeks and they will demand an end to the regime's dominance. These are the people who keep the regime alive today. And when the regime is stripped of their support as they find a better deal getting rich, the regime must either retreat or collapse. I guess they could call out the Army, but that's almost never worked to maintain control once the public gets money-fever. In fact, outside of a temporary victory in China, which gave way to liberalization almost immediately, I can't think of an instance where this has worked.

So the moral is simple: if you want to change a nation, liberalize economic relations and let greed crush ideology. If you want to pretend to change a regime while actually strengthening it, then pimp for sanctions.

Obama v. The GOP

Obama thinks this will help him and his legacy, but it won't. This change will mean nothing to Obama's legacy because the public just doesn't care about foreign policy or cold war relic policies. In fact, all it will do is add to the vague sense the public has that Obama is weak.

On the other hand, there is nothing to be gained by fighting this or attacking Obama. The best the GOP can do in that regard is to be ignored. A more likely result is they will be seen as being a pain in the ass who are obsessed with ideology and ancient feuds that no longer matter to the public.

Where this change will actually matter is in Florida electoral politics. And in that, the GOP is best situated to be the winner. The Cuban community in Florida is largely Republican, though the younger ones are more Democratic. And while the older Cubans are generally opposed to liberalization, they will ultimately be the ones who benefit the most from this change because they will be the ones who fund all the businesses that will be opening in Cuba. That means the GOP's Florida base will soon be much, much richer. And if the GOP helps them in this, through the normal "client services" in which Congress engages, then the GOP will be directly responsible for helping that effort to go smoothly. You can make a lot of friends that way... newly rich, powerful friends. In theory, the Democrats could do this too, only they don't have the connections to the community that the GOP does and they are seen as sympathetic to the wrong people, i.e. communists. What the GOP needs to avoid is trying to throw up roadblocks to economic development which let the Democrats become the heroes of the Cuban community. They also need to avoid changing the immigration preferences for Cubans, which will not sit well with the community. Beyond that, they should seize this opportunity to transform Cuba and the electoral landscape of Florida... Carpe Florida!

Thoughts?

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The Democrats Won't Win By Losing

One of our readers referred me to an interesting article last week. The article was at Politico and it was titled “Good News, Democrats, You’re Going to Lose!” The gist of the article is that the Democrats will be better off losing the Senate to the Republicans, as appears inevitable. The article makes some interesting points, but ultimately it is just sour grapes and it relies on biased assumptions.

According to the article, the issue is this. The Republicans will win the Senate. Far from being upset by this, the Democrats should be ecstatic because “the Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap operate hit peak suds.” Specifically, the author thinks the Tea Party candidates will turn the Senate into a “sit-com” as “grandstanders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz” go to war with the GOP leadership. This will push the Republicans to the loony fringes and turn the public off. Hence, in 2016, the public will be ready to embrace the Democrats with big sloppy wet kisses.

As proof, the author claims that Mitch McConnell has mapped out a confrontational strategy with Obama, whereby the Republicans will include all kind of fringe things in budget bills and dare Obama to veto them. He also claims that while the Republican leadership has defused the worst landmines in the primaries, they’ve done this by papering over their differences with their fringe. Finally, he notes that the Republicans no longer even talk about the things they normally stand for like cutting taxes.

I would add that, superficially, there is additional support for this in proclamations by fringers like Mike Huckabee who threatened this week to leave the GOP for failing to obsess enough about gays and abortion.

So this all sounds reasonable, right? Well, no.

The problem with this idea is that it fundamentally misunderstands much of what is going on. For starters, when has the opposition not mapped out a confrontational strategy against a president from another party... especially such an unpopular president? This idea means nothing, especially as McConnell is far too savvy to be pulled into anything stupid. In fact, even the author notes that the GOP leadership killed off any more shutdowns. So why should we believe that once McConnell controls the Senate, with few Tea Partiers in the Senate, that McConnell will suddenly let them run wild or embrace their lunacy to keep the peace? Don’t forget, this is the man who just successfully defended himself against the combined weight of every single Tea Party group in the country to win a crushing win in his primary.

Next, the author completely underestimates the importance of what happened in the primaries. The leadership didn’t rid itself of the fringe by “papering over” their disagreements! Ha! They went to war with the fringe -- Ted Cruz even whined about fringers being carpet-bombed by the evil leadership. The result was a party that crushed its fringe and retook control over itself. Not a single Tea Partier won a victory in this primary over an establishment candidate. And the effect has been dramatic. Indeed, since the end of the primaries, notice that you hear almost nothing but whimpers from the likes of FreedomWorks and the nutjobs who lost. Most disappeared back into the woodwork and the rest are busy trying to salvage their fundraising. Even Cruz has barely said a word against the party in months.

So what about calls to break away? Going into the primaries, the fringers genuinely thought they had the backing of the people. But the primaries exposed them as what they are – a fringe, even within the GOP. They know now that forming a separate party would do nothing but make them even less relevant. So now we know that not only can the party afford to lose them, but they can't afford to leave the party. This has become a paper threat.

For these reasons, this author is flat out wrong if he believes the GOP will stage a civil war. Not to mention, the Senate isn’t that kind of place anyways. The Senate is not a democracy and the Senate leader has too much power for a couple of malcontents to cause any real trouble. All they can do is talk, and the GOP leadership has an effective strategy to neuter that now.

As for not talking about tax cuts, the reason is that no one is listening to that issue. The Republicans have failed to sell the benefits of tax cuts for too long and the issue has gone cold. Instead, the public is worried about a lack of job, the cost of healthcare, the damage of Obamacare, the effects of the failure of Obama’s presidency, and protecting our society from intruders and foreign diseases and foreign religious nuts. You don’t talk tax cuts in that atmosphere.

The author also takes a shot at the GOP for failing to implement the recommendations of their post-2012 “autopsy,” but again, that shows a lack of knowledge. All the autopsy really said was that the GOP needs to implement a better technological approach to voter outreach. That has nothing to do with controlling the Senate.

This whole article strikes me as biased sour grapes. This author has a leftist view of the GOP as hopelessly fringey and he just assumes the GOP will act like Huffpo’s worst nightmare says they will. But the GOP is much better controlled and far less fringey than it was in 2012. Moreover, political parties have ways to hold their worst instincts in check when they assume power. Look at the Democrats, who squandered a supermajority in 2008-2010 because they were afraid to pull the trigger on anything. Look at Newt in the 1990s, who could have taken Reagan’s ideas to an extreme as all the think tanks on the right wanted, but who mainly tinkered with House procedures and then passed only a handful of truly significant bills.

I’m not saying things will go well or that talk radio will stop its fratricidal war against the GOP, but I am saying that the GOP is highly unlikely to implode through extremism because (1) it killed its extremists, and (2) the natural instinct of parties in power is to pander to the public to get more power, not go on an ideological revolution... and Mitch McConnell is too old school and savvy not to know that.

Thoughts?

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Seeing Red In Colorado

I’m always wary of speaking too soon, but it seems that a lesson is being taught in Colorado right now, and the result will be a strong showing for the GOP. That lesson? Drop “the culture war.”

For years now, Colorado has been drifting further and further into Democratic ranks. Frankly, it’s become a blue state. The reason for this is a combination of an influx of Californians who are morons and vote for the moron party and the fact the GOP excels at turning off voters. How has the GOP done this? By turning into a cult.

Look, when I grew up out here, Colorado was very conservative in the sense that Reagan was conservative. Coloradans believed in small government, limited regulation and a right to be left alone. But at the same time, they favored strong defense and law and order. In terms of values, they liked traditional values but with a live and let live flavor which meant you didn’t impose them on others. Essentially, we wanted to be left alone so long as we didn’t bother other people or cause problems. We wanted to be safe, but free. We trusted business, but we also trusted a small, focused government to regulate them. And we didn’t want to control our neighbors. This was the atmosphere in Colorado.

In the 1990s, things began to change. For whatever reason, we suddenly got an influx of Religious Right groups, like Focus on the Family who still have headquarters here. These people quickly took over the GOP and changed it. Suddenly, the live and let live attitude was replaced with a paranoia that wanted the government to make sure nothing untoward was happening in the neighbor’s bedroom. Economics vanished from the Colorado GOP agenda. People fled the party in droves. Even in Colorado Springs, which sits in the most conservative county in the country, Democrats suddenly became competitive for city council because people couldn’t stomach the obsession with gays and abortion and forcing prayer on public schools. They were worried instead about little things like roads and taxes.

In addition to this problem, the GOP also managed to pick up some fringers like Tom Tancredo whose only issue was his visceral hatred of Mexicans... and Republicans who disagreed with him.

The result was a GOP that became irrelevant and was becoming less relevant every year.

Suddenly, however, it looks like the GOP will win a Senate seat again as Cory Gardner appears ready to defeat Democratic marshmallow Mark Udall. The Denver Post even endorsed Gardener this last weekend. The GOP looks set to win the governorship too. And it looks like they will hold onto a House seat the Democrats had targeted; the Democrats announced this weekend they are cancelling $1 million in ads to help former state House speaker Mark Romanov try to defeat incumbent Republican Mike Coffman. That is a sure sign they think the race can no longer be won.

So what happened? Well, each of these Republicans has abandoned the whole insane culture war stuff. Both Coffman and Gardner have endorsed allowing over-the-counter sales of birth control, i.e. “the pill.” The reasons for this are twofold. First, as a policy matter, easier access to birth control has demonstrated that it will lead to a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer abortions. So this really can be seen as a way to reduce abortions. Secondly, this immunizes the GOP candidate from attacks that he wants to ban birth control. In fact, the reason the Post endorsed Gardner was that Udall has been blasting him with only one issue: CORY GARDNER WANTS TO BAN BIRTH CONTROL!!, and the Post called this dishonest. And with Gardner not talking about abortion at all, his campaign has resonated.

Similarly, Coffman has embraced the idea of allowing the pill to be sold over the counter (this is a GOP idea which is spreading fast even as it brings out calls of “RINO” as Bobby Jindal discovered when he became the first to try it) and he’s renounced his former support of the “personhood” amendment, which would ban abortion and do some very bad things.

Our gubernatorial candidate, Bob Beauprez, has run as a moderate while pounding away on Democratic Governor Hickenlooper’s signing of extremist anti-gun rights bills and some anti-capital punishment stuff. Hickenlooper is generally a moderate, but he stuck his neck out on those issues and now he’s paying for it. And Beauprez can capitalize on this because he’s focused on that rather than ridding the state of gays and abortion doctors.

This is an amazing turn around for the moribund Colorado GOP. And the message is clear: the public will support GOP candidates when they come across as normal and not fringey. And fringey doesn’t even mean moderate, it just means not being obsessed and showing priorities that align with those of the public. Indeed, neither Gardner nor Coffman is pro-abortion. They just don’t talk about the issue. And they don’t lump it in with birth control as Rick Santorum does, and they don’t foam at the mouth about how evil it is and they don’t cry about it in debates.

So the moral is that you can have religious conservative values or libertarian conservative values or whatever conservative values, just so long as you don’t foam at the mouth about them and so long as you don’t oppose things the public will never surrender (like a right to birth control). Win the public on the public’s terms and save the fringy stuff for later once you’ve won the public’s trust to see more of your agenda put into place.

That is what has saved Colorado from being a totally blue state this cycle. That can help the GOP fix a lot of its problems nationwide.

Thoughts?

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Odds Improve For Republicans In Senate

Things are looking up for the Republicans in the Senate at the moment. Indeed, the chances of the Republicans taking over the Senate now appear to be very high. Observe.

To win the Senate, the Republicans need to win a net six seats. This was never an easy task, but the Republicans have been helped by several factors. For one thing, many more Democrats are up for re-election than Republicans. Moreover, many of those Democrats are running in states where Republicans dominate and where Obama imploded. Not to mention that mid-term elections tend to favor the out-of-power party in any event.

Much more importantly, however, the Republicans are finally getting it right while the Democrats are imploding. Specifically, the Republicans have crushed their fringe in fight after fight and they don’t have a single crazy running in any of the key races. That’s a huge deal. Moreover, the Republicans who are running tend to be well-liked incumbents like Lamar Alexander in Tennessee or the well-liked Cory Gardener in Colorado, who managed to avoid an ugly primary fight for the first time in living Colorado Republican memory.

At the same time, the Democrats are imploding with candidates who are awash in scandals, with retirements, and now with a resignation in Montana which has shifted that seat from “most likely Republican” to “all but certainly Republican.” Even beyond that, the Democrats are in the horrible position of needing to defend the debacle that is Obamacare (something the public hates more and more every day), needing to defend the aloof and incompetent Obama, needing to defend the kiddie invasion of the border, needing to defend the jobless economy, needing to defend Obama’s assault on oil and coal (which are vital industries in many of the states at play), and in places like Colorado, needing to defend an ill-advised assault on gun rights. The result is a truly ugly playing field for these people.

So here is the score:

States Republicans Should Win

Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia

States Republicans Are Likely To Win

Arkansas, Louisiana

50/50 Chance of Republican Pick Up

Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia

Sucker States Where GOP Will Spend Money and Lose

Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon

Possible Republican Losses

Georgia, Kentucky

That means the Republicans are likely to pick up five, with a good shot at four more. They only need six. Against this, the Republicans may lose Georgia and Kentucky, but I doubt it. In Georgia, the Republicans picked the best of a bunch of weirdoes as their candidate, and he’s not horrible. The problem is the Democrats are running the daughter of the very popular Sam Nunn. Still, Georgia leans strongly to the right. In Kentucky, the problem is that the talk-radio-right has decided to prove to the world that Mitch McConnell “can’t win” by throwing a major tantrum and trying to make him lose. Ultimately, though, Kentucky too leans strongly to the right.

I suspect that both states’ natural strong conservative leanings will lead to Republican victories despite the hurdles. But even if that isn’t the case, right now it appears the Republicans will win just enough other seats to take the Senate even if they lost both of those... especially if the focus remains on the Democrats and their stupidity. It’s hard to defend stupid.

And in that regard, we seem to have hit a lucky wave. For one thing, the Tea Party groups now appear to be turning on each other for “not supporting” each other, and there don’t seem to be any issues right now where the talk-radio-right has the chance to make things about themselves. Obama too seems to be in lash-out mode, which won’t help him or the Democrats. Plus, as we near the election, talk of Obamacare and re-enrollment (and fines) will grow. I also suspect that come November, the fringe-left will be in psychotic mode over Iraq, unless that somehow solves itself suddenly, which is unlikely. So that will dog the Democrats too. So all told, the stars may be aligning for this one.

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And The Idiots Implode

Just a couple of quick points tonight... telling points about the future.

● RIP The Tea Party: The Tea Party continues its march toward political oblivion. For some time now, I’ve told you that the GOP has learned to fight back and now intends to shut out the Tea Party crazies. The Tea Party recognized this and whined and whined and whined, especially about loyalty... hypocrites. Ted Cruz actually whined about the GOP leadership “carpet-bombing” the Tea Party.

Anyways, when the GOP first started fighting back, the Tea Party decide to put all of their eggs in one basket as a determined show of force. If they could execute Mitch McConnell, then the GOP would learn not to resist them. That was the plan.

Thus, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, every other Tea Party luminary, the Senate Conservative Fund and every other Tea Party group endorsed and donated to McConnell’s opponent Bevins. For months, Rush and Hannity and the other Talk Radio nut jobs smeared McConnell with any lie and distortion they could think of. They made it very plain: You could not be a reel ‘merikan and not see McConnell as worse that Pelosi.

I told you, however, that McConnell would win easily because the GOP had learned to beat the crazies. And that is exactly what has happened. McConnell crushed Bevins by a mile on Tuesday.

Naturally, the Tea Party is now trying to back away from this. This has taken several phases. First, they started saying about two months ago that winning wasn’t their intent. Instead, they claimed it was enough to raise awareness. That’s called “managing expectations” and that’s horseship. Secondly, many are now disclaiming Bevins as a real Tea Party candidate because (1) he lied about supporting the bailout, (2) he lied about his education, (3) he suggested that gay marriage would allow parents to marry their children, and (4) he gave a campaign speech at a cockfighting rally. In reality, however, he’s no different than the other crazies they’ve been backing all over the place. The only reason they want to disavow him now is because his was the race they couldn’t win... so they want to pretend they weren’t involved in the race. Drudge actually described Bevins as McConnell’s “ ‘Tea Party’ Challenger,” in quotes, to suggest that he wasn’t really Tea Party. Presumably, the establishment falsely labeled Bevins as Tea Party.

One article tonight laughingly claimed that the true Tea Party victory in this election cycle was in Nebraska, where the winner (Sasse) is an insider if ever there was one, is a friend of Mitch McConnell, and was originally framed by the Tea Party as the evil establishment guy until they switched sides and turned on the Tea Party candidate, re-framing him as the evil establishment guy. Apparently, this “victory” shows that the Tea Party is still strong.

In the end, the Tea Party isn’t going away anymore than Sarah Palin is going away, but they are finished. Tonight was the last nail the coffin needed. The money and the voters have jumped ship back to the GOP. It’s over.

● RIP The Democrats: This does my heart good. The Democrats are freaking out about the midterms. They are freaking out because they have no message as their push to raise the minimum wage (their only idea) hasn’t caught on with the middle class, and no one likes the things they’ve done. Heck, despite its faked success, Obamacare remains about as popular as herpes, as does Obama himself. Anyway, check out this quote about the Democrats’ feelings about Obama from Politico

Anxious Democrats point to Obama’s low-40s approval ratings as the kind of anchor-round-the-neck numbers that could cost the party real ground in the House, and enough Senate races to lose the majority. His failure so far to present a broad, compelling message on the economy — beyond an emphasis on raising the minimum wage that’s fallen flat with middle-class voters — has, according to internal Democratic polling and focus groups, left that group without a clear sense of what he or the party stands for beyond helping the poor.

Aww. I feel so bad for them! LOL! Actually, no I don’t. This is a party who has been relying on the GOP imploding going into the election. The GOP ended that danger by executing its turds. Now the Democrats have nothing they can run on and so much they need to run away from... Obamacare, record unemployment, falling incomes, 10 million under-water home loans, still too big(ger) to fail, not a promise kept, international humiliations, insults and injuries galore. Good luck with that. Couldn’t happen to nicer people.

● RIP Inevitability: Finally, Hillary’s campaign is suddenly in serious trouble. Ha ha. It all started when Karl Rove noted that Hillary’s medical record might be relevant because it sure looked to him like she had suffered head trauma when she fell.

BANG!! Faster than a speeding bullet, things blew up on Hillary. Experts appeared who commented on her appearance, the medical glasses she wore, and everything else that indicated she’s just too old and perhaps too concussed. The media tried to defend her, but once this genie got out, it spread. Soon even Democrats like Obama-clone Deval Patrick were saying that “inevitability” (the word associated with Hillary) is an ugly thing. There is now a very real chance that Hillary will ultimately fail before she even reaches the starting point in the primary race. If that happens, then the Democrats have no one with a name they can run... the cupboard is bare.

Interesting times.

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California GOP: Ending The Suicide Pact

Interesting news out of California. The nearly-existinct Republican Party has decide to abandon its suicide pact. This is yet more proof that the fringe is being pushed aside. Indeed, California’s GOP invented the fringe and have clung to it for 20 plus years now. So this is rather big news.

For those who don’t know, the California GOP is as close to extinction as any major political party has been in our lifetimes. They score only 29% of registered voters and they aren’t competitive in any populated part of California. In fact, things have gotten so bad that the Democrats were able to change the law to let them run two Democrats against each other in some races because there is no viable Republican.

How did things get this way? Well, that’s pretty obvious unless you’re a reel ’merikan.™ What happened is that starting in the 1990s, the GOP went hard core on abortion, gays, the environment, and hating moderates. Sadly for the GOP, Californians pretty much support all those things. That cost them women, suburbanites and the young, leaving only an ever-shrinking number of conservative ghettos... kind of like the way the GOP slowly vanished from the Northeast, and then the North, and then the Midwest and now the West.

More importantly though, the California GOP really dove hardcore into race and immigration. Indeed, California became the center for things like the English only movement, the “deport them all” movement, and the center for grousing about the browning of America. The timing couldn’t have been worse because California’s demographics changed dramatically, from 78% non-Hispanic whites in the 1970’s to 43% today, with Mexicans being the single largest ethnicity at 25% of the population. You can do the math on what that means. And no amount of “we just need to get out the vote” crap is going to disguise this failure.

Anyway, in a special election last year, 48 year-old cherry farmer Andy Vidak did the impossible: he won as a Republican in an agricultural district south of Sacramento. He won despite the presence of a great many Mexicans in his district. How did he do it? Well, he ran on a platform that (1) avoided taking positions on social issues, (2) supported a path to citizenship for some undocumented aliens, and (3) supported granting drivers licenses to illegals. He also took more standard Republican positions like promising to address the lack of jobs and water, and he opposed the high-speed train from San Francisco to Sacramento.

Well, now state party Chairman Jim Brulte has decided that it’s time to save the party and he’s using Vidak’s victory as a template. He wants GOP candidates to reflect the views of their districts rather than follow the party’s ideological platform. And what he’s done is he’s allowing Republican candidates to tailor their campaigns to address local issues:

“The candidate that most looks like and sounds like and has the most shared values and shared experience of the majority of voters wins.”

Gee, ya think? Seriously, how twisted have things become that someone espousing “reflect the values of your district” would be considered a radical thinker and controversial. That really tells you how wrong the mindset has gotten and why the GOP is all but extinct in blue states and increasingly more red/purple states.

Anyways, this is a real surprise because the California GOP has been one of the most rigidly fringe for nearly 20 years now. They were happy to die rather than be the least bit palatable to the public. So it’s encouraging that a party chairman would have the nerve to allow this change – predictably, the response has been brutal about the betrayal and (ironically) the end of the GOP... uh, you were dead already folks. Anyway, this change is truly significant and represents a total repudiation of the talk radio strategy, and hopefully the national GOP will grasp what this means and will begin to follow this model in other lost states. Letting candidates reflect the values of the voters in their districts is the only way to be a national party and we are always better off getting 80% of what we agree upon than 0% of what we want.

Thoughts?

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The Fringe Is Routed

This comes from many months of careful observation, hence it's long. But it's worth reading. While talk radio hosts continue to talk up their heroic Ted Cruz and his secret army of reel ‘merikans who are only minutes away from sweeping away the hateful GOP, the truth is that the fringe has lost and is in full collapse. Here is what you won’t hear from talk radio.

● Embracing The Enemy. In 2010, the Tea Party caught people off guard by unseating a handful of Republican moderates who had been in their seats for a very long time. At first, this was a good thing. But then the Tea Party morphed into crazytown and their primary goal (only goal actually) became making war against the GOP. (Michelle Malkin has actually admitted that "[t]his to me is much more fascinating than the usual left-right battles.")

The GOP, most of whom sit in safe seats, suddenly realized that the new danger didn’t come from the Democrats to their left, it came from a challenge to their right. Thus, the GOP embraced the Tea Party to protect themselves from challengers. And for the next three years, the GOP kowtowed to these people.

Unfortunately, trying to appease the insane never works and the GOP discovered that nothing they did was ever enough. No matter what the GOP did, the fringe continued to hate them and to try to destroy them. Moreover, the more entangled they become with the fringe, the further away they drove the public. As a result, the GOP has been flirting with permanent minority status.

● The First Victory. After November 2012, things changed. The GOP decided that they needed to move away from the fringe and they began the process. They developed a strategy for dealing with fringe candidates, tested it, and are now applying it. At the same time, they started introducing an agenda to turn them back into a responsible party again. The results have been dramatic, even if they are largely behind the scenes.

The strategy they employed started with this. When Liz Cheney decided to attack Republican incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi, the fringe jumped onboard as usual. This was one of about a dozen attempts to "primary" sitting Republicans. At the time, groups like Tea Party Express and Freedom Works declared that Cheney would sweep to victory, as would a dozen others, and they would finally unseat the RINO leadership.

But this time, the GOP fought back. First, they gave a massive number of endorsements to Enzi and they made it clear that they would not simply stand on the sidelines. They also ridiculed the Senate Conservatives Fund (Cruz’s group) as being in the business of replacing Republicans with Democrats, which is essentially all Cruz has accomplished. The results were strong and immediate. Cheney’s candidacy collapsed and she withdrew for “family health” reasons.

Within days of her withdrawal, the fringe did what they always do: they disowned her. Indeed, a number of people who had been praising her as a reel ‘merikan only days before suddenly dismissed her as an establishment carpetbagger. Cult-like groups always work this way because they cannot afford failure. More was coming...

● The Turning Point. As Wyoming played out, Ted Cruz decided to make a power play in Washington. He saw an opportunity to embarrass the GOP leadership by demanding a shutdown. He figured that the GOP leadership would never act so irresponsibly, so he was safe making the demand because he knew they would never give him what he wanted. Essentially, he had a free pass to thump his chest and claim to be the only courageous Republican. He also used the opportunity to spread the idea that the public was secretly with him and that they would rally to a shutdown, which would expose the GOP leadership as out of touch. Again, he could make this claim because he knew it would never be tested. He even got the House GOP backbench to support him in an effort to make Boehner look like a fool.

It was a fantastic bluff. Not only did it allow him to define himself as better than everyone else in the GOP, i.e. as the only genuine conservative in a nest of RINOs, but it let him offer the Kool-Aid of the “secret majority” to his fringe audience all without any fear that his claim would ever be exposed. The fringe, naturally, jumped on this like retards humping a doorknob and they all parroted how cowardly the leadership was and how Cruz must be made the new leader.

Then it went wrong. Boehner shrewdly gave Cruz what he wanted and the government shut down. This became the real turning point. See, it turns out the public did not support Cruz and the fringe. To the contrary, around 90% blamed the GOP for shutting down the government and felt they had acted irresponsibly. Moreover, the deal that was needed to end the shutdown wiped out sequestration. Cruz had, as usual, set the cause of conservatism back.

More importantly, however, while this was going on, Cruz’s behavior exposed him. When the shutdown first happened, Cruz actually refused to say whether or not he supported what had been his own idea. He was waiting to see how it played. And when it went sour fast, he denied that this had been his idea at all. Even four months later, he continued to deny this. Said Cruz on Face the Nation:

“I didn't threaten to shut down the government the last time. I don't think we should ever shut down the government. I repeatedly voted to fund the federal government.”

Of course, evidence to the contrary abounds all over the net.

What this did was expose Cruz. Intelligent conservatives would now see that he was a liar who used them for personal gain, and they talked about how shocked they were when he admitted that he had no exit strategy for the shutdown, i.e. no purpose in doing it. Conservatives like Kelly Ayotte apparently met him with quite a fury. And when Cruz tired again recently to cause a shutdown and then forced the GOP to vote for the budget to overcome his filibuster, he found no supporters. The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page even called Cruz, “the Minority Maker” and chastised him for making the GOP “walk the plank on a meaningless debt ceiling vote.” Outside of the deep fringe, the love and blind faith is gone.

● Open Season. Immediately after the collapse of the shutdown, Boehner verbally attacked the fringe by calling groups like The Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks “ridiculous” and claiming they had “lost all credibility.” Blogs like Hot Air quickly mocked this as a tantrum and called him whiny, but they missed the point. Boehner’s message wasn’t intended to win the fringe, it was intended to tell the rest of the GOP that it was open season on the fringe. And open season it became.

Since Boehner’s comments, there have been a steady stream of attacks on the fringe from people like Tom Coburn, Charles Krauthammer and Jennifer Rubin. The GOP changed its election rules to make it harder for small candidates to win primaries and to force everything to wrap up quicker, i.e. to make another Santorum unlikely. The GOP also fired companies who had worked with Cruz’s anti-Republican PAC. Iowa’s governor is doing his best to make the Iowa GOP mainstream by driving out the fringe. Mike Huckabee essentially likened the fringe to the Nazis, which brought howls of anger from various blogs. John McCain, who had planned to retire, now will likely run for a new term because fringers in Arizona censured him for “associating with liberal Democrats” and he plans to spite them. Everywhere, the establishment is fighting back and more and more conservatives are switching sides to join the establishment against the fringe.

● Routed: The Battle of Kentucky. With things going poorly for the fringe as recognized conservatives started deserting the cult and speaking against them, the fringe needed a big victory. They chose to attack a man they saw as a soft target: Mitch McConnell. McConnell is a fairly reliable conservative, though a practical one, and he and Boehner have become the fringe’s boogeymen, an odd package of spineless dupes and evil RINO geniuses who are simultaneously incompetent yet manage to dominate and frustrate 60 million conservatives. They saw McConnell as the perfect target because unseating him would be a huge show of their power and they believed he was vulnerable to a primary challenge. So they decided to support his Tea Party sponsored opponent: Matt Bevins.

In fact, “support” is an understatement. Like Hitler at Stalingrad, they are pouring everything they have into this fight. Everyone from groups like the Club for Growth to Sarah Palin have sent money and endorsements to Bevins. Every single fringe group you can think of is involved in this effort. Talk radio has repeatedly and unanimously pimped for Bevins and torn down McConnell. The idea was this: if the fringe can win this one huge victory, then it can wash away all the defeats it has suffered in primaries, special elections and with all their candidates going down in flames to the Democrats in 2012. More importantly, they can regain their ability to rule the GOP by fear. That was the plan.

But the new GOP tactics have proved extremely effective. Bevins was close until the GOP started attacking the fringe as crazy, as having no end game to their strategies, and as aiding the Democrats. And after the Cruz shutdown debacle, things started to go wrong. The latest poll has McConnell beating Bevins by 42 points.

This is an epic disaster for them. Indeed, the fringe has completely lost its influence, and they know it. What is most telling has been the change in rhetoric. After promising, a month or so ago, to unseat two dozen Republicans in the primaries, the same groups now are saying that they didn’t expect to win any of those contests, but it was enough to raise awareness of the issues. That’s loser speak. At the same time, the fringe starting whining about how unfair the GOP has been treating them. Even Cruz whined about this, stating that the GOP was “carpet-bombing” Tea Party candidates and that they should focus on the big bad Democrats. This is how people talk when they know it’s all over... and note the hypocrisy.

At this point, Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks is still promising to unseat 28 GOP incumbents blah blah blah, including Eric Cantor and John Boehner, but no one is taking that seriously. In fact, the GOP is so confident that they’ve gone from the defensive to the offensive. First, the Chamber of Commerce came out and supported any GOP candidates who would oppose Tea Party candidates. Now former Rep. Steven LaTourette has founded a new PAC whose goal is to “beat the snot out of Tea Party Congressional candidates.”

All of this smells of a route.

● Where Things Stand. So where do things stand? The fringe is still speaking of their glorious victories to come, but from the sound of things, there will be no more Tea Party victories in primaries. A good number of Tea Party congressmen may also lose their seats. The GOP is slowly working on an agenda that will align it with the public and the actual GOP base again – not the fringe. For example, with polls consistently showing that even 60% of the GOP base wants immigration reform, its interesting to note that every single GOP candidate for President has endorsed the idea even as the fringe views this as heresy.

Meanwhile, a number of prominent conservatives started talking about an agenda – an agenda that goes against everything the fringe stands for. The article about Ramesh Ponnuru and Yuval Levin the other day is just the latest example. Even people like Rand Paul, who the fringe assumes are with them, have distanced themselves. In fact, in a very telling comment the other day, Rand Paul said this:

“I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party. . . and it has to be a transformation, not a little tweaking at the edges.

So we need to become hard core “conservative,” right? Well, no. Here’s what he said next:

“Republicans haven’t gone to African-Americans or to Hispanics and said, ‘You know what? The war on drugs, Big Government, has had a racial outcome. It’s disproportionately affected the poor and the black and brown among us. There is a struggle going on within the Republican Party. It’s not new, and I’m not ashamed of it. I’m proud of the fact that there is a struggle. And I will struggle to make the Republican Party a different party, a bigger party, a more diverse party, and a party that can win national elections again.”

That is the complete opposite of what talk radio preaches about needing to become a smaller, nastier, more pure party.

The fringe is bleeding support too. Indeed, there was an interesting poll the other day, whose import was missed. The poll asked Republicans who they would support for 2016. Despite the fact that Ted Cruz was the only reel ‘merikan on the list, he scored a pathetic 12%. The other 88% were spread around various people who have all been accused of RINOcy. This means that the fringe is down from a high of around 20% of the Republican party to 12% tops. That’s a loss of 40% in six months and makes them about the size of Ron Paul’s support in the past.

Interestingly, I’m seeing evidence too that many of the fringe are giving up on the GOP and going back to whence they came in third parties.

Does this mean Cruz is finished? Hardly. The fringe only listens to talk radio and talk radio won’t tell them any of the things above because that would harm their ratings. To the contrary, if you listen to Rush or Levin or the rest, or you read HotAir or Breitbart, you will hear a steady stream of how Cruz and his army of reel ‘merikans are about to win victory after victory over Boehner and McConnell, who will soon be replaced. And then they will explain away the divergence from reality with tales or RINO traitors and magic. Because of this, Cruz, the phony-outsider, will get to continue to milk the fringe for money and he can continue his war against the GOP... but his influence is over. Things are changing a lot.

Thoughts?

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Sending Messages News Round-Up

I was going to write something brilliant tonight, but let’s do a bit of a news roundup instead. There have been quite a few interesting little tidbits of late. Today’s theme is sending a message.

● The Iranians Are Coming!: The Iranian Navy is actually sending a ship to our shores. Yes, they are. According to their Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, they are doing this to “send a message.” Seriously. What possible message could the Iranians be sending – “We are pathetic!”? These guys are dumbships. They don’t seem to realize that the message their little show of farce shows is just how overmatched they are. This is the sort of thing that not only exposes them as hopelessly incapable of competing with us, but also as too stupid to understand why that is. Frankly, I’m hoping they sink on the way... or get captured by pirates. That would be fitting.

● Run Joe, Run!: Slow Joe Biden got a message the other day when the latest polls showed him 61% behind Hillary. This sends an interesting double message. The message tells us that the Democrats are unified behind Hillary (though Cuomo wasn’t in the poll). At the same time, her topping out at 73% suggests that the Democratic fringe will be restless.

As an aside, the Republicans were a little closer. Paul Ryan led Jeb Bush 20% to 18% with Christie third at 13%. There is a message here too: the non-reel ‘merikan candidates total 88%. This is further proof of what I’ll talk about later this week, which is that the fringe is failing.

● Russia is Great!: Russia is trying to send a message with the Olympics. They have done their best to copy what China did with the Olympics to create a spectacle which is supposed to tell the world that Russia is a modern, powerful country... rather than a backwards land of strongmen and corruption.

Yep.

Too bad they (1) didn’t finish the hotels, (2) don't have water you can use, (3) started threatening journalists and falsely accusing them of lies when those reporters exposed problems, and (4) have been playing political games with opponents. All this does is reinforce that Russia is a sh*thole kelptocracy.

● Silence Sends A Message Too: It’s been almost two weeks since Obama’s pathetic state of the union in which he promised to make himself a dictator by Executive Order. His silence has been deafening. Once again, Obama has promised to charge out there and somethingsomething only to pretty much blow it off. We have a lazy, lazy president, folks.

Interestingly, this weekend (notice the weekend announcement to downplay it), Eric Holder announced that they will try to maximize the federal benefits given to gay couples. Wow. Let’s put this into perspective. The law already requires that from Holder. So what he just promised is to do what he was already required to do. I wonder if Obama’s followers are going to figure this one out?

● Foul Language: Obama’s new top diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, was forced to apologize to the EU after being caught on tape saying “F*ck the EU” over their attempts to intervene in the Ukrainian crisis. Nice. This is after a string of embarrassment with Obama appointed-ambassadors. Obama is causing himself problems everywhere. What's the message? "I'm a danger to myself and others."

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Eureka!

Well, it’s a start. I have been saying for many moons now that the Republicans desperately need an agenda that can reach people. In fact, I’ve written one out and I’m slowly discussing the book here. Imagine my surprise to read an article this last weekend in which various high profile Republicans agreed... if only they knew what they were doing!

Last week, apparently, a group of House Republicans were summoned to the offices of Majority Leader Eric Cantor. He handed them a blank piece of paper labeled “Agenda 2014.” The point to this was to tell them that after their recent disasters, they need a new plan to win over the voters they haven’t been winning. Essentially, they want to create an agenda to fix the harm they’ve done to the reputation of the party by:

● Shutting down the government, which drove their poll ratings to record lows (around 9%).

● Obsessively pushing debt reduction, which they’ve realized the public doesn’t see as affecting them personally.

● Futile and meaningless attempts to repeal Obamacare.

● Earning a reputation as being a party whose sole concern is opposing Obama.

Great. When you have a problem, the first step is admitting the problem and I’m happy to see that they now realize that the talk radio plan has driven them to the verge of extinction. That makes this a good start intellectually.

Even better, their goal apparently is to create an agenda to target “the real economic issues facing middle-class Americans.” Woo hoo. Fricken excellent. It’s the middle class who decide elections and appealing to them instead of the ideologues will be key to long terms success.

Better yet, they are starting with the premise of trying to solve problems rather than shoehorn in the same old garbage the electorate has rejected time and again. So what are they considering? Here’s what is known so far:

● Energy Prices: Rather than focusing on more drilling, which the public hasn’t responded to in the last half dozen elections, they are focusing on how home energy prices have outpaced the rise in take home pay. Great focus. Let’s hope they come up with something worthwhile.

● The Lack of Jobs: This is absolutely key. Jobs are the currency of elections and we haven’t had a jobs plan since Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, their plan seems to be encouraging private sector companies to provide job training. That’s crap, but this is an early phase, so we’ll see.

● Education Reform: Cantor apparently wants charter schools. That’s a good start, though it’s entirely inadequate. Still, I’m glad they are finally focusing on education. This is a key point.

● Poverty: They want to look at ways to reduce poverty. Good. Trying to help everyone in the country is the way to go about it, rather than just trying to help specific targets. Hopefully, they will tie this into jobs and education.

● Cost of College: This one is key. Unfortunately, what I’ve heard is weak. They want to reduce college cost by getting more schools accredited and encouraging students to enter higher paying professions. Those ideas suck, but at least they are talking about the issue rather than grousing that people shouldn’t go to college.

At this point, this agenda remains worthless. It’s also clear to me that a big chunk of the party won’t like it because (1) they don’t want the party to grow, they want it to shrink to just the pure and (2) they don’t think the party should do anything but fight Obama. Nevertheless, I feel quite positive about this. I feel positive about this because it shows that the GOP hierarchy is finally getting smarter. They realize that they need to reach the middle class and that the only way to do that is to address the things that worry them. That’s a HUGE change for the GOP.

The next step will be them actually being able to spot the relevant issues and come up with worthwhile solutions. They aren't there yet, but at this point, it makes me happy that they have even gotten this far. Keep going, folks!

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More Thoughts On The Shutdown

If the government doesn’t really shutdown and no on actually cares... did it happen? Well, apparently it has happened and it’s going on right now. Anyway, here are more thoughts on this “shutdown.”

● The Optics: I’ve been really surprised that this shutdown has gone as well as it has. The Democrats are going down in flames right now. Obama’s approval ratings are tanking. There is dissention in Democratic ranks. Even the MSM is picking apart Obama’s claims. Why? Well, several reasons.

For one thing, the public hasn’t cared at all, so there is no immediate pressure on anyone to solve this issue. That benefits the Republicans who forced it and it deprives the Democrats of their entire strategy, which was to wait for the public to break the Republicans’ will.

For another, the Republican leadership has stayed on message, and it’s a good one. They keep saying, “Why won’t Obama negotiate with us?” That’s the perfect message to win Americans. Why? Because we are a rational people who believe you settle disputes rather than fight to the death. Here, the Republicans are being the adults because they are offering to talk. Obama is being the child because he is holding his breath.

Obama has helped this perception by hamfistedly trying to upset people by doing things like closing monuments that don’t need to be closed, by trying to shut down state-owned parks, by telling Wall Street that it should tank, by whining about essential people being furloughed when he is the one who decided who got furloughed, and by acting aloof and indifferent. This makes it really hard for the media to support Obama. Even worse, our fringe is silent as they don’t know how to play this, so they aren’t saving Obama with a distraction. In effect, the MSM can cover Obama or nothing... and when that happens, Obama flames out. That’s why his popularity is at an all-time low right now.

Further, the Republican leadership has played this brilliantly in the House. They have been passing bills doing things like funding cancer research, ensuring veterans get paid, and trying to open monuments Obama has shut. The Democrats have been voting against these (and Reid refuses to allow votes on them), and it’s killing them because these are the kinds of votes that will feature prominently in campaign commercials. In fact, because of this, 57 House Democrats have broken ranks on various issues.

What’s more, with the right not giving the media anything to attack, the media has little else to cover except the unfolding disaster of Obamacare... which only makes Obama’s problems seem even larger. For those who missed it, HUGE numbers of the people who signed up may not actually have coverage because they didn’t provide sufficient information. At the same time, tech analysts are now saying that the problem with the computers shutting people out is not a lack of server capacity, it’s a design flaw that the program tries to load too much information at once... meaning the system may need a redesign. Ha ha.

All of this is bad for the Democrats. But there’s something else that is going on that will force them to surrender fairly soon. Right now, the PR of both sides says they have no reason to surrender, but that’s not true. Boehner has no reason to give in: the shutdown happened... nothing important changed... no one cared... why stop now? It’s sequestration all over again.

Democratic math, however, is different. The Democrats are the party of government. When Obama was elected, they hoped he would restore the public’s faith in government. He didn’t. To the contrary, faith in government is at an all-time low. What’s more, the big non-event of sequestration taught people they had nothing to fear from budget cuts, the same thing is happening here now: the longer the shutdown goes on, the more people are learning they have nothing to fear from a closed government. This is disastrous for Democratic ideology which relies on people looking to government to regulate their lives.

Whoops.

● Foreign Policy Still Doesn’t Matter: As an aside, Navy SEALs grabbed the al Qaeda leader responsible for somethingsomething. In theory, this should have given Obama a huge boost, but no one cared. This again proves that short of all-out war, foreign policy simply doesn’t matter to the public.

● Why You Can’t Volunteer: Finally, this is worth pointing out. Whenever you have a shutdown, there are always stories of people volunteering to work for free (like a group of Catholic priests who are under contract to work on military bases) who get told they can’t volunteer during a shutdown, and people say, “That’s an outrage!” Actually, there’s a really good reason for that.

Before the Republicans depoliticized the government in the 1930s, a lot of contractors, employees and average citizens found themselves being pressured to provide favors to the government or government employees... or offering free favors for favors. Several agencies used this to add to their budgets to let them do things Congress hadn’t allowed. The law was changed to make it illegal to give something for free to the government to stop this (agencies also can’t keep money they earn because of this) – this is called an “illegal augmentation.”

So while this may sound stupid that someone can’t volunteer, there is a valid purpose behind it. This is an anti-graft provision because it’s impossible to tell who is just volunteering, who has been pressured, and who is hoping for a quid pro quo. So this is something to remember... it’s not nonsense, even if it seems like it on the surface.

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How To Win The Shutdown Fight

Well, we're down in the muck of all this government shutdown crap. No one wanted to be here, and a lot of us would like to yell at GOP leaders how stupid they are, but that won't fix things. We're in it, and we can either make things worse for us with mutual recriminations (as usual), or we can try to win this battle. And I think we sort of can.

Now when I say "win," what do I mean? For starters, I don't mean defunding, much less repealing, ObamaCare. We shouldn't resign ourselves to that abomination, either; but evidently, the TOTUS is going to stake his legacy on the legislation, and I believe he would rather resign than abandon that goal. Besides, he's still got enough support from his base that he can't be made to give it up. Nor does it mean completely humiliating him at the negotiation table (if/when we ever get there). Neither side ever has total victory in these things.

No, a Republican "victory" in this showdown would consist of a couple different things. 1) While we almost certainly can't wrangle defunding out of the Dems, a further delay of key provisions or even some significant revisions are still within our grasp, at least theoretically. (What those revisions would be, I can't say; that's for people with a better knowledge of the ins and outs of health care.) 2) Although I've never been a huge fan of "PR triumphs," preferring real triumphs instead, the fact is there is a way for the GOP and its conservative philosophy to come out on top whatever happens with ObamaCare. And as events this week have shown, the Democrats have done quite a bit to help us along with that. But there's still a lot to do.

So for whatever it's worth, here are my proposed steps:

Step One: DON'T PANIC. First off, let's not automatically assume that Republicans are going to lose this fight and have their public image permanently trashed. Remember the speed at which the news cycle travels? The whole shutdown issue won't go away in voters' minds, especially if if gets conflated with the debt ceiling fight, but it's not going to be the deciding factor in the next elections. Those are still more than a year off. (That kind of undercuts my argument about being able to turn it around on the Democrats, but the important thing is avoiding a disaster ourselves, so that's okay.) As some pundits have been pointing out recently, making comparisons with the 1995-96 shutdown fiasco isn't a huge cause for worry, either; in reality, all sides bounced back to their previous approval levels soon enough, and Democrat wins in '96 probably would have happened anyway, given the economy and all.

Plus, keep in mind that as a result of redistricting, relatively few GOP congressmen are in swing or bluish districts and therefore in electoral danger, and that's not likely to change significantly regardless of the outcome. Which leads me into my next point...

Step Two: Talk To Your Public. Notice I said "Your Public," not "The Public." Again, most of the GOP congressmen are safe, because they have reliably red districts. A majority of them, being loyal to the Right, are naturally going to blame Obama and Senate Democrats for the shutdown crisis more than House Republicans. They'll get some blame, don't get me wrong, but not the bulk of it. This makes the advice being floated from some conservatives even smarter: If Boehner can't get any traction with Obama and Reid in the next couple days, he should let the bulk of fellow GOPers go home for a little while and get some feedback from their constituents. This is an okay move, because not only will they be seen as trying to respond to the desires of the public, they can come back and truthfully claim (based on what they've been hearing in their conservative districts) that the public gives equal if not more blame to the Democrats, and they're wanting Obama and Co. to compromise on this. If they won't, this is all on them.

Step Three: Get In Their Faces. As a certain famous politician once said. Obama and Senate Democrats have been providing conservatives with SO many openings this week. There's been Harry Reid's idiotic "Why would we want to help just ONE child?" line from the other day. There's Mr. Friend of Labor himself, the Prez, saying shutting down the government is as unjustifiable as a worker shutting down a factory because he doesn't like how it's being run (no, really). And there's all sorts of unhinged rhetoric from the Left about physically destroying the GOP for its temerity. Get on TV, ignore the gotcha questions from the reporters, and make the Dems own this rhetoric.

And while you're at it, guys, bring up the inadvertent admissions from the Left's own heroes. Bring up Bob Woodward's statement that the continuation of this shutdown is "on the President's head" for refusing to engage in serious discussions and creating a vacuum of leadership. While he's not exactly a major hitter in Hollywood, bring up actor Rob Schneider's recent announcement that he's switching to the Republican Party. Imply that it's the Democrats who are driving people away with their inflexible, extremist positions, and don't let up. The media will be forced to at least address it, and people will start to wonder.

Step Four: Be All Sweet Reason. As you probably know, the House Republicans have pushed through temporary, partial spending bills all this week, funding specific portions of the government, which have all been killed by the Senate. They should keep doing this. They may bear a lot of the onus for causing this shutdown right now, but the longer this goes on, the longer the Senate keeps rejecting these stopgap measures, the more people will start to wonder why Reid won't allow even a brief, incomplete respite. In fact, Boehner and the leadership should ramp it up. If the Senate will kill them anyway, expand these bills to include more and more of the government, and finally announce that you're ready to temporarily fund all the rest of DC (or as much of it as the rules allow) right now, if only Obama and Reid will agree to some further negotiations on ObamaCare. This is going to get noticed--and in that case, all the stories the media is running about those po' wittle civil servants going broke while unemployed may come back to bite the Left.

Now, this may not do the job, and in any case, we should limit our expectations. But a full-court press by the House, using all these tactics, will certainly force the public to rethink who's really responsible for this mess, and who's ready to fix it. And it's just possible, given the growing debacle with the ObamaCare rollout, that the Dems really will be forced to the bargaining table on this, too. Maybe not. But it's better than just bemoaning each other.

Any suggestions?

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Some Thoughts On The Shutdown

I’m going to interrupt tonight’s article to give my impressions related to the shutdown. These are just some random thoughts, sad and cynical though they may be. //sigh Please share your own.

● There will be a shutdown. The prevailing wisdom has been that the Republicans wouldn’t pull the trigger, but I think the GOP leadership is more afraid of their lunatic fringe than they are the public. That means they are incapable of backing out now. Since the Democrats think they will back out, we are looking at a shutdown.

● The shutdown will be a PR nightmare for the Republicans. The public will blame them for shutting down the government and hurting people without a reason.

Indeed, the biggest problem is the utter chaos behind this. First, the lunatics demanded a shutdown because that makes them happy. Then they decided they wanted a shutdown to get Obamacare defunded. Now they want a shutdown to get the individual mandate delayed a year... except the hardest core fringe actually opposes the shutdown because they want more than those damn RINOs will get. The “moderates” keep saying they don’t want a shutdown at all, yet they voted for it. Meanwhile, the fringe is screaming that the RINOs will never shutdown the government, even as they are, and many are claiming the point to the shutdown is outing RINOs. Hmm.

In the end, the only conclusion the public can reach is that the Republicans have no idea what they want except to cause problems... and they don’t care who they hurt in the process. That won’t play well, especially once you start hearing horror stories of soldiers losing homes or whatever.

● The shutdown won’t help the Republicans with their fringe either. You can’t placate a lunatic. You just can’t. And you certainly can’t placate people whose entire platform is “I will destroy the RINOs.” In fact, as expected, some of these people are already attacking the GOP leadership because they aren’t demanding enough from the shutdown. Apparently, Boehner failed to demand that Obama kill himself as part of the deal.

Even if the Republicans get something out of this, it won’t help them with the fringe because the fringe is premised on the idea that no matter what the GOP does, they could have done better if they had been more obnoxious. The GOP can’t win with those people.

● I actually suspect the Republicans will get a delay in the individual mandate. Yes, Obama will cave. Why? Because he can score major points by doing so. This is what I expect from him, if he’s smart:

(1) Call the Republicans crazy and play Cruz against Boehner to keep the right foaming at the mouth... always a turn off for voters.

(2) Let them shut down the government. Spend the next week letting the Republicans spin as the media rips them apart. This should be worth several seats in 2014. The more the Republicans in-fight, the longer I would let the shutdown go. And they will in-fight. This is a glory moment for opportunists.

(3) “Reluctantly” agree to delay the individual mandate for one year. Why? Well, it pushes the whole thing back behind the 2014 election so it won’t hurt the Democrats and they can use their new House majority to fix Obamacare before 2015. It also gives Obama a chance to fix all the technical disasters they’ve created. And most importantly, it gives Obama a pass on any failures that occur during the first two years because he can claim “Republican interference” was the cause.

(4) Make sure that the Republicans think Cruz was the reason Obama “surrender” so the lunatic base thinks they won and will go super-nuts.

(5) Laugh his f*cking ass off.

● Getting the one year delay in the individual mandate won’t help the Republicans with the public either because the public isn’t affected by it yet and doesn’t know how much they will hate it.

Wow, that’s dark. How about listing some happy thoughts in the comments?

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Why I Don't Like Chris Christie

I’ve made the point repeatedly that conservatism is headed in the wrong direction. No agenda, anger, obsession with purity... none of these things help. So, should we turn to someone who doesn’t go in for any of this: Chris Christie? NO! He’s an even bigger problem.

Here’s the thing, when I talk about the problems of conservatism, I’m doing so for a purpose. Conservatism is losing elections regularly. It is starting to lose them by greater and greater margins. It has lost whole races, genders and generations of people. What I am trying to point out is why this is happening and why we need to change our ways. I am also doing my best to point out policies we can implement, policies which align with conservative principles, which will win these people back.

In other words, my goal is to wake people up to the self-inflicted wound that conservatism is causing itself and provide ways to fix it that don’t conflict with our fundamental beliefs. That should not be confused with endorsing "moderates," however. All I’m suggesting is a return to actual conservatism away from the radicalism talk radio is preaching.

That’s not Chris Christie though. He wants to claim the mantle of moderate, and that’s where the problem begins.

There is nothing moderate about Christie. Chris Christie is Glenn Beck, only he uses fake-moderatism whereas Beck uses fake-conservatism. He yells, he screams, he demonizes, and he lives on platitudes rather than ideas. I can’t name a single idea Christie has ever advanced. To the contrary, his “ideas” are to attack both parties for lacking ideas... the pot calling the kettles black with self-righteous indignation. Essentially, he uses the two parties as strawmen that he can attack to make himself sound moderate and practical without actually being either.

From what I’ve been able to piece together of his record in New Jersey, he basically points fingers at everyone and accuses them all of being rotten. Then he spits out a few diversionary platitudes to make it sound like he's offering some "common sense" idea, even though everything he's saying is meaningless: "By God, it's time we worked hard to make things better! Harrumph. And we need to stop those who want to make it worse!" Then he signs whatever law makes it across his desk while he continues to rail against evil partisanship. It's nonsense.

Now he’s picking fights with national candidates, like Rand Paul, because he wants to join the national stage, but he's doing the exact same thing. He's offering nothing in the way of ideas except that we should adopt his nonpartisan ideas... whatever they are. And to prove that he's nonpartisan, he's attacking conservatives by calling them vague insults like "dangerous" without any justification or explanation and without offering a single solution. If he ordered pizza he would blast them for demanding a specific order, tell them to send him "what works," take whatever they give him and then rail against the deliver boy for being partisan about his order. I say again, it's nonsense.

Christie is not the answer. Essentially, he’s an angry fraud whose behavior cannot be predicted and whose words are as harmful to conservatism as are the idiots screaming for purity. He's Glenn Beck in a fat(ter) suit.

We do not need Christie. We do need an agenda. We need to start thinking about how conservatism can appeal to the American people again. Therein lies the answer, not in attacking... well, anyone. Get positive, stay positive. Coke doesn’t sell itself by attacking Pepsi, it sells itself by telling you why you need to drink it. Sell conservatism, don't try to unsell liberalism. And don't fall for the idiots who offer nothing, be they self-described "genuine conservatives" or self-described "moderates."

Rediscover conservatism.

** By the way, I still need reviews on my book! I want to send this book out to certain politicians, but it needs a lot more reviews first. I’m going to make it free today and tomorrow for those who haven’t gotten it yet. Please get the book and leave a review. (LINK)

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Consumerism and GM Foods

One area where conservatives have had a real blindspot is recognizing misbehavior by corporations. All an oil company has to do is scream “commies tryin’ to steal our jobs!” and any number of conservative pundits will jump to defend them. That does seem to be changing though. Let’s talk about this in the context of the “Monsanto Protection Act” (MPA) and Genetically Modified (GM) crops.

The MPA isn’t actually called that. What it is, is a rider placed anonymously into a spending resolution in the Senate. It passed both chambers very quietly, with most Congress critters claiming they didn’t even know they had voted for it, and Obama signed it. No one has admitted to placing it into the bill, but Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo) has admitted that he “worked with Monsanto” to draft the rider, and it appears the thing was put into the bill by Blunt or the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii). What it does is that it bars federal courts from halting the sale or planting of GM seeds even if the court finds the seeds to be harmful. This appears to be in response to a 2010 ruling by a federal court that ordered the USDA to halt Monsanto from planting GM sugar beets after the court found that the USDA approved the planting of those beets before the environmental impact assessment was even completed. In other words, the USDA declared it safe before its own scientists studied whether or not it was safe. Naturally, we can’t have courts doing things like that to stop our corporate masters!

But this is nothing new for Monsanto. They use the courts like a weapon and they are THE poster boy for “cronyism.” Consider the case of bovine growth hormone. That growth hormone is used in cows in the US because the USDA approved it. It was approved by Michael Taylor of the USDA. Before joining the USDA, Taylor was a Monsanto lobbyist. After approving it, he returned to Monsanto as a Vice President. The USDA approved it after the FDA declared it safe. The FDA reached that conclusion based on a report submitted by Monsanto about the hormone’s safety. The FDA employee who examined the Monsanto report and approved it was Margaret Miller. Before joining the FDA, Margaret Miller worked for Monsanto AND she wrote the very report she would then approve at the FDA. In other words, she wrote a report claiming this stuff was safe when she worked for Monsanto, that report was submitted to the FDA, Miller then moved to the FDA, where she reviewed her own report and approved it. Talk about a rigged game! But is there any reason to think the hormone isn’t safe? Well, Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada all ban it. Want another example of cronyism? Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, took a job at the USDA, where he wrote the USDA’s “organic food standard,” which allows GM foods to label themselves “organic.”

“Coincidentally,” the USDA has never denied a single application by Monsanto to use GM crops. Yet, it is interesting to note that Monsanto does not have similar success anywhere else in the world. GM foods are banned or labeled in 60 countries. In fact, Monsanto has stopped trying to change the laws in Europe to get GM crops approved because: “We’re going to sell the GM seeds only where they enjoy broad farmer support, broad political support and a functioning regulatory system.” Translation: they’re only going to sell where they can control the regulators. Hey, that’s us!

So what’s the danger?

Well, leaving aside the health question, there is this problem: GM foods are banned or labeled in 60 countries. When GM crops are planted here, there is a high risk that these crops will contaminate other fields, as just happened in Oregon – Monsanto blamed “saboteurs” (the rest of you call those things wind and birds). When that happens, it becomes impossible to separate the GM from non-GM products as they mix. Since GM products are banned in a vast number of countries, a few careless GM farmers can potentially destroy the ability of all American farmers to export their products.

That’s the concern with salmon. The FDA is in the process of approving a GM salmon created by a company called AquaBounty. Their salmon grow faster and twice as large as normal salmon. And while GM proponents typical (falsely) claim that their products are no different than selective breeding and thus “could be found in nature,” the salmon completely disproves that. This thing was engineered with genes from eels and could never be found in nature. It is a true frankenfish, and the salmon industry is freaked out about this because consumers don’t want these things and, if they escape into the wild, it will be impossible to tell real salmon from the frankensalmon. If that happens, it will kill the US salmon industry as consumers shift to salmon from other parts of the world. It’s also not clear what will happen if these mongo salmon start eating everything in sight.

AquaBounty, like all other GM food makers, not only opposes mandatory labeling, but it opposes letting others label their salmon as non-GM. Why oppose voluntary labels? Because consumers don’t want this GM stuff and the industry knows that. This is why Monsanto has given up on Europe, because their regulators won’t let them hide the GM products amidst the others and Monsanto has concluded: “We’ve come to the conclusion that this has no broad acceptance at the moment.” And they know that if companies start labeling their products as free of GM materials, then the products made from GM materials will be abandoned. Yep.

I’ve discussed this briefly in my book, but the Republicans need to latch onto these issues and stop being patsies for industry. When (not if) these things escape, we could be looking at billions of dollars in lost sales as other countries ban our foods.

Even more importantly, though, why are we helping companies hide information consumers want? Consumerism lies at the heart of conservatism because consumerism is about letting billions of consumers make their own choices. . . it IS the free market and conservatives should never support laws that seek to control consumers to protect the politically connected. Robbing people of knowledge is no different than forcing them to do what you want. It’s time conservatives grasped that and stopped believing that industry is always good. Industry is great... when it satisfies consumers. But when it uses the government to control consumers, then it’s evil. Pure and simple.

Fortunately, some conservatives are starting to get this. Mixed in with the consumer advocates, environmentalists, and food safety advocates who are opposing things like the Monsanto Protection Act are Tea Party people. Said the blog of the Tea Party Patriots: this is “a special interest loophole and a doozy at that. This is a situation in which a company is given the ability to ignore court orders, in what boils down to a deregulation scheme for a particular set of industries.” Yep.

Keep this principle in mind: companies turn to the government when they can’t win over consumers in a free and fair market place. The role of the government should always be to ensure that producers are as free as possible to offer what they think consumers want AND that consumers are free to make informed decisions about what they want. For free markets to work, you can’t just support half that equation.

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Gallup, Rubio and the Talk Radio Base

Bev will probably kill me for talking about 2016, so don’t tell her I said this. ;-) I said last week that despite the howling on talk radio that Rubio was finished, Rubio will be the man to beat in 2016. Now there’s some proof to back that up in the form of a Gallup poll. This poll also tells us something interesting about the party’s base.

Gallup quizzed the public about five Republican contenders. What they found suggests that the Republican base is very much in tune with its leaders and not with talk radio. Consider these numbers on how Republicans responded:

Notice that despite the near universal hatred poured out at Rubio from talk radio and conservative blogs, Rubio has a 58% approval and only an 11% disapproval.... and that’s among Republicans, not the public at large. That’s significant. That means that despite months of an intense anti-Rubio campaign by the supposed leaders of the base, the Republican base approves of Rubio in overwhelming numbers – by a 6 to 1 margin. Even more significantly, only one in ten disapproves of Rubio. That’s an amazing repudiation of the talk radio message, and that suggests several things.

First, that suggests broad acceptance (if not endorsement) of immigration reform by the Republican base, otherwise Rubio’s disapprovals would be higher. This is consistent with the large and growing number of conservatives who support the initiative and the polls which show surprisingly high support for the measure. This further suggests that Rubio won’t be hurt by pursuing immigration reform, or else his disapprovals already would be higher.

Secondly, it suggests that the talk radio base is not the supermajority within the Republican base they like to think they are... not even close. Consider this: Rubio has been blasted for months with near 100% vehement opposition from the talk radio base. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that some high proportion of the talk radio base disapproves of Rubio. Yet, he only polls 11% disapproval. That means that only 11% of the Republican base is following the talk radio line. Similarly, look at Christie. Christie is viewed favorably (52% - 25%) by the Republican base despite being attacked daily for several years now as a RINO traitor by talk radio. Thus, only 25% of the Republican base toes the talk radio line on Christie.

Think about what this says about the size of the base. Talk radio has blasted Christie so long, so harshly and so universally that it is likely that everyone in the talk radio base disapproves of him as well as a good number of conservatives who don’t align with the talk radio base. That means not only that it’s logical to see his 25% disapproval as the upper cap on the potential size of the talk radio base, but it also means that 25% likely overstates the size of the talk radio base. Looking at these numbers suggests to me that the talk radio base is somewhere between 11% and 25% and I would place them at around 16% (Rubio disapproval times 1.5 or Christie disapproval times 2/3). Again, that is not consistent with the picture painted by talk radio of a silent conservative majority oppressed by a small RINO leadership. Why does this matter? Well, I think it explains why the Republican leadership seems to be willing to decouple themselves from the talk radio base. I see hints of this everywhere, everything from a change in the agenda to a change in the rhetoric to the pushing aside of bomb throwers like Michelle Bachmann. And I don’t think the Republicans would be doing this if these numbers were reversed.

Other thoughts on this data:

● This data suggests that Paul Ryan (69% - 12%) would be the leader if he chooses to run, but I actually doubt he will. I like Ryan a lot, but he just never looked comfortable in 2012. I think he will happily stay in the House and run the budgets.

● This data suggests that Christie is stronger than I would have guessed last year, though I wonder how far his appeal really runs? I suspect a lot of his support is at the level of “Oh, I like him in New Jersey, but not nationally.” In either event though, he must be considered a serious contender. Ultimately, I interpret his approval rating as a sign that the base is being much more practical than they been have in the past. This seems to be a statement that they will accept people who aren’t ideologues if they can win in places Republicans don’t win and they can bring some conservatism to the table in those areas.

● Rand Paul’s support (56% - 13%) is interesting too. Paul embraces issues that sit uneasily with the Republican base. His foreign policy and defense policy make the neocons angry, the religious right is suspicious of his claims to social conservatism, and his attempts to appeal to minorities and youths through civil liberties issues are upsetting to many conservatives. Yet, six in ten approve and only one in ten disapprove. That suggests that the Republican base is much more open to new ideas than you hear.

● Finally, the data suggest that Ted Cruz may have a problem. He has hooked his star to the talk radio base and they have rewarded him with an intense amount of coverage and praise. He is the anti-Rubio. Yet, all of this has resulted in only 40% approval and 52% indifference. Those aren’t great numbers when the guy you’ve cited as your mortal enemy is 20% higher than you. Even worse, if the “not Rubio” agenda hasn’t worked so far, there is little reason to think it will work any better in the coming two years, and Cruz doesn’t really offer more than that. If he wants to win, he’ll need an agenda, not just opposition to the new Republican agenda.

I guess we’ll see.

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