Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’

Democrats in Congress are no longer asking themselves whether this is going to be a bad election year for them and their party. They are asking whether it is going to be a disaster. The GOP pushed deep into Democratic-held territory over the summer, to the point where the party is well within range of picking up the 39 seats it would need to take control of the House. Overall, as many as 80 House seats could be at risk, and fewer than a dozen of these are held by Republicans.Political handicappers now say it is conceivable that the Republicans could also win the 10 seats they need to take back the Senate. Not since 1930 has the House changed hands without the Senate following suit.

Is this a piece from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal or Fox News.com, all major conservative news outlets in the United States? No. It’s a direct quote from yesterday’s Washington Post, usually viewed by conservatives as a flagship of the liberal establishment inside the Beltway. The fact The Post is reporting that not only could Republicans sweep the House of Representatives this November, but may even take the Senate as well, is a reflection of just how far the mainstream, overwhelmingly left-of-centre US media has moved in the last month towards acknowledging the scale of the crisis facing the White House.

To its credit, The Washington Post has generally been ahead of the curve compared to its main competitors such as The New York Times in reporting President Obama’s travails, but its striking front page coverage of the “Democrats’ plight” and talk of a possible GOP Senate win (regarded as fantasy just a fortnight ago) was a bold step for a publication that is probably read in every office of the Obama administration.

Read more at the Telegraph

The Left is in Full Retreat: Time to Step Up the Pressure

Rasmussen: Understanding Tea Party Essential To Predicting America’s Future Political Scene

The Tea Party Rescues America

Numerous opinion polls show that after the November elections, the Republican Party will have regained enough seats in the House to take back the majority position and the Speakership. Results for the Senate are less amenable to forecast, but even so, gains up to and including a remote chance for a majority are possible there as well.

It is necessary to remind Republicans of one salient fact about this predicted shift in political strength as a result of the 2010 midterm elections, and it is a fact that can be expressed in just a few words:

You may have a majority, but you do not have a mandate to govern in any way that you choose.

Read more at American Thinker

Memo to Republicans: It’s Big Government, Stupid!

Midterms Not Just Toxic for Democrats

The giveaway regarding presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plans for America was his repeated use of the words “fundamentally transform.”

Some of us instinctively reacted negatively — in fact, with horror — at the thought of fundamentally transforming America.

The “us” are conservatives.

One unbridgeable divide between left and right is how each views alternatives to present-day America. Those on the left imagine an ideal society that has never existed, and therefore seek to “fundamentally transform” America. When liberals imagine an America fundamentally transformed, they envision it becoming a nearly utopian society in which there is no greed, no racism, no sexism, no inequality, no poverty and ultimately no unhappiness.

Conservatives, on the other hand, look around at other societies and history and are certain that if America were fundamentally transformed, it would become just like those other societies. America would become a society of far less liberty, of ethically and morally inferior citizens and of much more unhappiness. And cruelty would increase exponentially around the world.

Read more at Real Clear Politics

Why the left hates conservatives

The World Doesn’t Hate America, the Left Does

The most dangerous president in history

What’s so wrong with Social Democracy?

President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, “The buck stops here!” But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush.
 
The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.

No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
 
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
 
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.
 
The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.
 
Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.
 
Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.

Read more at One News Now

Never before has government spent so much and intervened so directly in credit allocation to spur growth, yet the results have been mediocre at best. In return for adding nearly $3 trillion in federal debt in two years, we still have 14.9 million unemployed. What happened?

The explanations from the White House and liberal economists boil down to three: The stimulus was too small, Republicans blocked better policies, and this recession is different because it began in a financial meltdown. Only the third point has some merit, and for a different reason than the White House claims.

On a too-small stimulus, this isn’t what Democrats or most Keynesian economists told us at the time. Even Paul Krugman, who now denies intellectual paternity for this economy, wrote on November 14, 2008 that “My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.” The White House raised him by 33% two months later, but now we’re told that wasn’t enough.

Given that the stimulus program was so poorly structured and so overtly politicized, how do we know that, say, $500 billion more would have made a difference even on Keynesian terms? The money for government spending has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy. Our guess is that by ensuring even higher debt and implying higher taxes, a bigger spending stimulus would have done even more harm.

Stimulus godfather Mark Zandi and CBO have produced studies claiming that the stimulus saved millions of jobs and thus prevented an even deeper recession. But these are essentially plug-and-play economic models that multiply the amount of dollars spent by the assumed impact on jobs based on previous studies, and, voila, the jobless rate would have been higher without such spending. In the real world, the economy lost 2.51 million jobs.

As for blaming the Republicans, with only 40 and then 41 Senators they couldn’t stop so much as a swinging door. The GOP couldn’t even block the recent $10 billion teachers union bailout. The only major Obama priorities that haven’t passed—cap and tax and union card check—were blocked by a handful of Democrats who finally said “no mas.” No Administration since LBJ’s in 1965 has passed so much of its agenda in one Congress—which is precisely the problem.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

The Obama Tax and Spend Hikes

The Audacity of Failure

Keynes vs. Hayek: The Great Debate Continues

The Keynesian Fraud

For class warfare types who just want to “stick it to the rich”, here’s what they end up doing: hurting everyone, including the poor. You can’t attack one group and insulate the rest – it’s a symbiotic relationship, just like an ecosystem.  Economics 101.

Wealthy Americans aren’t spending so freely anymore. And the rest of us are feeling the squeeze.
 
The question is whether the rich will cut back so much as to tip the economy back into recession — or if they will spend at least enough to sustain the recovery.
 
The answer may not be clear for months. But their cutbacks help explain why the rebound could be stalling. The economy grew at just a 2.4 percent rate in the April-June quarter, the government said Friday, much slower than the 3.7 percent rate for the first quarter.
 
Economists say overall consumer spending has slowed mainly because the richest 5 percent of Americans — those earning at least $207,000 — are buying less. They account for about 14 percent of total spending. These shoppers have retrenched as their investment values have sunk and home values have languished.

In addition, the most sweeping tax cuts in a generation are due to expire in January, and lawmakers are divided over whether the government can afford to make any of them permanent as the federal budget deficit continues to balloon. President Barack Obama wants to allow the top rates to increase next year for individuals making more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000. The wealthy may be keeping some money on the sidelines due to uncertainty over whether or not they will soon face higher taxes.

Think of the wealthy as the main engine of the economy: When they buy more, the economy hums. When they cut back, it sputters. The rest of us mainly go along for the ride.

Read more at CNS News

The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

Paul Ryan: Class warfare makes good politics, but terrible economics

The imposters have once again gotten their come-uppance!  Who would vote for liberals that are so desperate for power they have to trick voters by trying to co-op the “tea party” label?

The Daily Caller reports:

The secretive effort to create a formal Tea Party political party in Michigan ended Friday with a death sentence from the Michigan Supreme Court.

In a 5-2 ruling, the court upheld an appellate court decision to bar the Tea Party and its slate of 23 candidates from the November ballot because of a technical problem with petitions the party circulated.

Activists in the tea party movement who believed the Tea Party

political party was a fraud by some Democrats to dilute the influence of conservative voters in this fall’s election were relieved by the ruling.

State Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer has denied any involvement by his organization in the Tea Party effort. Still, ties between the wannabe party and Democratic officials and sympathizers were documented by the Free Press in a report Friday. Most damaging were revelations — now the subject of a criminal probe — about possible forged signatures on candidate affidavits notarized by a former Oakland County party official.

Activists Say Tea Party Imposters Infiltrating Elections

Phony “Tea Party” candidate charged with felony theft

THIS is the kind of frightening ignorance we have to rescue our country from, and the reason why some are arguing that we’ll never get government off our backs until we bring back the culture of personal responsibility.   

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a prank call.  But sadly, it wasn’t.  Wow!  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!

View on YouTube

Healthcare or a Hummer? Life’s Tough Choices

Voter: Obama Is Going To Pay For My Gas And Mortgage!

Back on Uncle Sam’s Plantation

Something for nothing? Think again

Walter Williams: Good Intentions

To reform the culture, take back our children’s education from the socialist indoctrinators! 

Can all of America’s political problems be solved by returning to constitutional, limited government? The answer given by many conservatives and libertarians is a resounding yes. Reading the Founding Fathers, the answer would generate a more complex answer.

In the Federalist Papers, the authors dedicate considerable space to history’s failed experiments in self-government. John Adams wrote in 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

What Adams suggests is the people’s character impacts our government’s character. The early generations of Americans were independent-minded folks. Help for those in need came from the church, the family, or the community. Citizens expected only a few limited functions to be performed by the state.

In 21st century America, we expect the government to provide Social Security retirement and disability, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, and Pell Grants. Parents expect their children to have a free public education through thirteen years of school.

Two tactics for dealing with this are popular. The first, the rationalistic approach, tries to challenge people with a debate about numbers and the effectiveness of government solutions. The second, the pragmatic approach, avoids taking on any popular program, other than fleeting attempts to reform Social Security. The last administration chose the latter tactic.

The pragmatic approach fails because the areas most in need of the reform are politically difficult to address. The rationalistic approach fails because it doesn’t address the culture. For example, many elderly Americans rely on Medicaid to take care of their long-term-care expenses once their net worth has dropped to nothing. The key problem here, however, is the culture that considers it acceptable for us to allow our parents to go into poverty so the government can step in.

Conservatives talk about the church and the community returning to its proper role of caring for the poor, but this effort is easier said than done. Pastors complain about the poor viewing churches as welfare agencies. Judging by donation reports, churches would be overwhelmed if they had to take on all the people dependent on the government. We cannot effect a permanent reduction in the size and scope of government, or meaningful government reform, unless we change our culture’s demand for the government to provide our every need.

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly identified how cultural issues impact voting with her politically incorrect declaration: “Seventy percent of unmarried women voted for Obama. And this is because, when you kick your husband out, you’ve got to have Big Brother government to be your provider.”

The statement angered liberals and embarrassed some conservatives, but CNN’s 2008 exit poll does show that 74% of unmarried women with children, and 69% of unmarried women without children, voted for Obama. In fairness, however, 68% of unmarried men with children also voted for Obama. And 56% of unmarried men without children voted for Obama; compare that to the 53% of married men who voted for McCain.

The poll also showed those who attended religious services at least weekly voted for McCain, while those who attended less frequently or not at all voted for Obama. A more religious, more marriage-minded America would have voted quite differently.

In the end, the majority of the world has little in common with the libertarian archetypes of Howard Roark or John Galt. We will either have strong families, strong houses of worship, and strong communities, or we will have strong government to take the place of all three.

This isn’t to say government must or can solve our culture’s problems. However, those on the right who think conservative goals for limited government can be achieved through passing economic legislation are spitting in the wind. We will never have a limited government until we have a culture that allows for one.

To change our culture, we must take a more holistic approach to the issues America faces. Even more than conservative candidates and activists, we have a great need for conservative writers, artists, schoolteachers, Boy Scout and American Heritage Girls troop leaders, ministers, and volunteers in organizations that seek to strengthen marriages.

Read more at Pajamas Media

TEA-Party Hypocrisy: How Much Socialism Is Acceptable?

Religion and Morality: Indispensable Supports

Principium Imprimis – First Principles

Judging by the tenor of media coverage, you’d think traditional marriage was a failing issue for the GOP. But it’s not. To date, 30 states have adopted marriage amendments, including several deep blue states. Those campaigns often have aided moderate Republicans by turning out a base that otherwise would have stayed home.

Can the GOP point to comparable victories on immigration, tax policy, or gun rights? No. Yet marriage is fast becoming the pariah to top party bosses. Blue-blooded country club Republicans aren’t comfortable talking about God, morality, and tradition. Can we get back to railing against illegal immigrants, please?

Politics aside, the reasons for conservatives and Republicans to continue standing for traditional marriage are legion. Glenn Beck doesn’t get it when he claims freedom-loving Americans have “bigger fish to fry” than traditional marriage and abortion.

“You can argue about abortion or gay marriage or whatever all you want, the country is burning down,” Beck said in early August.

That sentiment fails to recognize the inseparable connection between America’s social and economic ills — as if the fiscal sphere were solely responsible for the decline of America. It’s not. The fall of the traditional family has long been linked to economic instability, the rise of the welfare state, and an electorate that doesn’t understand, nor want to defend, freedom, liberty, and tradition.

There’s also a marked distinction between the public issue of same-sex marriage and the private issue of protecting the rights of homosexuals as citizens. Americans should be protected under the law regardless of sexual orientation. But that’s a far cry from re-defining civil marriage to include relationships that nature defines as untenable and God as immoral.

Economic concerns are, understandably, at the forefront of voters’ minds this fall. But marriage continues to be a winning issue with voters. If GOP bosses continue down the road that leads to total abandonment of this principle, they’ll fast discover unintended consequences at the ballot box.

Read more at the American Spectator

Social Issues Cannot Be Divided From Fiscal Issues

When Congress returns from its summer recess, members will face a pivotal decision about the expiring Bush tax cuts. President Barack Obama has called for their permanent extension for singles with incomes below $200,000 and married couples with incomes below $250,000, but has proposed that most of the tax cuts for households with higher incomes be allowed to expire.

To buttress this position, the president and his supporters have repeatedly asserted that the expiration of these cuts will have little impact, because they affect only a tiny fraction of the wealthiest Americans, people who “can afford it.”

The numbers are clear. According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.  Would Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden deny that the more successful firms owned by individuals in the top income-tax bracket are disproportionately responsible for investment and job creation?

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

More Dems buck plan to let taxes increase for rich

The Facts About the 2003 Tax Cuts

The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

The Business of America Is Business

At first glance, this may seem like an arrogant question.  What right do any of us have to assume that God is on our side?   As Abraham Lincoln said, “I know the Lord is always on the side of right; but God is my witness that it is my constant anxiety and prayer that both myself and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”

How, then, do we know if we are on God’s side?  By studying His Word.  The more I study the arguments of liberals in regards to “justice” and “compassion”, the more I realize that they often define these terms as Marx did, not as the scriptures do.   That can make a huge difference in how one interprets scriptures which talk about justice and the poor, causing the reader to read socialist interpretations into the scriptures which are not there and twist the meaning to fit their worldview.  May we always be vigilant to allow God’s Word to shape our worldview, not the other way around. 

For more than a hundred years liberals and conservatives have been arguing over the true meaning of justice. The left emphasizes just outcomes—seeking smaller gaps between rich and poor, and a comparably dignified standard of living for all members of society. The right stresses just procedures –making sure that individuals keep the fruits of their own labors and remain secure in their property, without seizure by their neighbors or by government.

Liberals accept unequal, potentially unfair treatment by government in order to achieve fair results; conservatives accept unequal, potentially unfair results so long as every citizen receives fair and comparable treatment by government.

These arguments have raged for generations without definitive resolution, but that doesn’t mean that both sides are right, or that the questions that divide them offer no final answers. In fact, key Biblical passages provide a strong indication that conservative concepts of economic justice comport far more closely to the religious and philosophical foundations of western civilization. If the Bible is indeed the word of God (as a big majority of Americans say they believe it is), then it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the Almighty would cast his all-important ballot for Republicans.

For instance, as the weeks count down to the Jewish New Year this September, congregations around the world all read the same weekly Torah portions from the Book of Deuteronomy, including the famous exhortation, “Justice, justice, shall you pursue.” (Chapter 16, Verse 20). The obvious question on this verse is why the Bible repeats the Hebrew word, “Tzedek” – which means both “justice,” and “righteousness”. A great Polish sage from the late 1700’s, Rabbi Bunam of P’schischa, recorded a profound answer from the Tradition. The text uses the word “Tzedek” twice to make sure that when you pursue justice, you only use just-and righteous-means. In other words, the Biblical view directly contradicts the leftist inclination: no, you can’t unjustly confiscate wealth from those who created it to fulfill the righteous goal of helping the poor. The Bible insists that no matter how worthy your purposes, you must employ only righteous means in achieving them.

This understanding turns up repeatedly in Scripture. For instance, a key passage in the Book of Leviticus (19:15) declares: “You shall not commit a perversion of justice; you shall not favor the poor and you shall not honor the great; with righteousness (Tzedek) shall you judge your fellow.” Amazingly, the Bible warns us not to “favor the poor” even before we’re instructed “not to honor the great,” because partiality for the unfortunate counts as an even stronger human temptation.

And what about all the Biblical demands, in both Old and New Testaments, to show compassion to widows, orphans and the poor?

Read more at Townhall.com

‘Social Justice’ Versus Biblical Justice

The Ugly Side of “Social Justice” Theology

Evangelical Left Twists the Gospel in ‘Social Justice’ Fervor

Barack Obama’s Marxist Spiritual Advisor

TRUE Social Justice: Transforming Lives In Need

Is the Tea Party a Christian Movement?

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You don’t win elections by watching Glenn Beck. You’ve got to do the hard work – walk precincts, talk with neighbors and lick envelopes. Scott Ott, Stephen Green and Bill Whittle tell you what it will it take to deliver a Republican majority in Congress on Election Day. The midterm elections, Obama and the Tea Party Movement on this edition of Trifecta.

Listen on YouTube

From the Right Scoop:

An excellent monologue from Mark Levin talking about how we must be active in politics in order to take back our country. He says we can’t just sit on the sidelines and expect to win the biggest elections of our lifetimes, in 2010 and 2012, and we can’t leave these great Tea Party candidates hanging out to dry. We must be politically active to restore our country to the principles on which it was founded.

You know, personally, I felt like Levin was playing off of the big rally this weekend, even though he never mentioned it directly. He has always been critical of Beck who tends to take a somewhat ‘hands off’ approach to politics and I think there is something to be said for that. But in this monologue I think Levin was saying ok, this rally thing was good, but we must turn this into a political movement or else we lose.

Now to just differentiate for a second, Beck believes that if you live up to a high standard by turning back to God and letting Him guide you, then you will pick candidates who reflect the Godly principles of how you live. I think he’s right and I don’t think Levin would disagree at all. But Levin looks at the practical side as well and emphasizes that you must do the hard work of getting candidates elected in order to affect change. I think he’s right as well. In fact I think they are both right and that both philosophies need each other to get maximum effectiveness of political change.

But let me add that I don’t believe that Beck would just have you change your lives for nothing. I think he too believes you must be politically active as well, or else we lose. The main difference in the two of them really is nothing more than emphasis. Beck is emphasizing the ‘God side’ while Levin is emphasizing the ‘activist side’.

But try not to look at this as Beck vs Levin and visa versa. They both have the same goal in the end of seeing this country turned back to God and the founding principles on which this great nation was established.

Activism or Awareness? A False Choice

Join the fight to take back our nation!

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the tea party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats‘ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a Ground Zero mosque.

What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the tea party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president’s proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Read more at the Hartford Courant