What happened? We dodged a bullet

Transcription

At Issue this week... Obama Presidency by Thomas Sowell
November 19, 2014
2014 Election
Barone (8, 21)
Coulter (7)
Harsanyi (9)
Saunders (18)
2016 Election
Kudlow (2)
Will (3)
Answer Man
Seamans-Shook (14)
Assisted Suicide
Saunders (20)
Berlin Wall
Bay (30)
Black Education
Williams (26)
Data Mining
Malkin (12)
Dear Mark
Levy (19)
Democrats
Charen (4)
Erickson (11)
Lowry (20)
Double Standard
Bozell (21)
Prager (10)
Freedom
Napolitano (29)
Free Speech
Saunders (28)
God’s Grace
Olasky (30)
Illegal Immigration
Malkin (6)
Iran
Greenberg (31)
Thomas (29)
Israel
Charen (23)
Farah (28)
Jobs
Lambro (22)
Marriage
Thomas (23)
Minimum Wage
Farah (15)
Obamacare
Limbaugh (13)
Morris (13)
Obama Presidency
Lambro (5)
Lowry (3)
Sowell (1)
Pollsters
Towery (12)
Race
Buchanan (24)
Elder (26)
Tyrrell (25)
Republicans
Buchanan (14)
Chavez (25)
Jeffrey (18)
Krauthammer (16)
Limbaugh (17)
Massie (11)
Morris (4)
Schlafly (15)
Shapiro (17)
Will (9)
Veterans Day
Norris (27)
What happened? We dodged a bullet
Just what happened last week on election day? And what is going to happen in
the years ahead?
The most important thing that happened
last week was that the country dodged a
bullet. Had the Democrats retained control of the Senate, President Obama could
have spent his last two years in office loading the federal judiciary with judges who
share his contempt for the Constitution of
the United States.
SUCH JUDGES — perhaps including Supreme Court justices — would have
been confirmed by Senate Democrats, and
could spend the rest of their lifetime appointments ruling in favor of expansions
of federal government power that would
make the freedom of “we the people” only
a distant memory and a painful mockery.
We dodged that bullet. But what about
the rest of Barack Obama’s term?
Pundits who depict Obama as a weak,
lame duck president may be greatly misjudging him, as they have so often in the
past. Despite the Republican sweep of
elections across the country last week,
President Obama has issued an ultimatum
to Congress, to either pass the kind of immigration law he wants before the end of
this year or he will issue Executive Orders
changing the country’s immigration laws
unilaterally.
Does that sound like a lame duck president?
On the contrary, it sounds more like
some banana republic’s dictator. Nor is
Obama making an idle bluff. He has already changed other laws unilaterally, including the work requirement in welfare
reform laws passed during the Clinton administration.
The very idea of Congress rushing a
bill into law in less than two months, on
a subject as complex, and with such irreversible long-run consequences as immigration, is staggering. But there is already
a precedent for such hasty action, without
Congressional hearings to bring out facts
or air different views. That is how Obamacare was passed. And we see how that has
turned out.
People who are increasingly questioning Barack Obama’s competence are continuing to ignore the alternative possibility
that his fundamental values and imperatives are different from theirs. You cannot
tell whether someone is failing or succeed-
In a similar vein, Obama said, “we consume more than 20 percent of the world’s
oil but have less than two percent of the
world’s oil reserves.” In short, Americans
are undeservedly prosperous and selfishly
consuming a disproportionate share of
“the world’s output” — at least in the vision of Barack Obama.
That Americans are producing a disproportionate share of what is called “the
world’s output” and consuming what we
produce — while paying for our imports
— is not allowed to disturb Obama’s vision.
Resentment of the prosperous —
(c) 2014, Creators Syndicate
whether at home or on the world stage —
The president’s refusal to protect the runs through virtually everything Barack
American people by quarantining people Obama has said and done throughout his
coming from Ebola-infected areas — as life. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes
was done by Britain and a number of Afri- to find the clues. You have to shut your
can nations — is by no means a sign of in- eyes tightly to keep from seeing them evcompetence. It is a sacrifice of Americans’ erywhere, in every period of his life.
interests for the sake of other people’s inTHE BIG question is whether the other
terests, as is an assisted invasion of illegal
branches of government — Congress and
immigrants across our southern borders.
the Supreme Court — can stop him from
SUCH ACTIONS are perfectly consis- doing irreparable damage to America in
tent with Obama’s citizen of the world vi- his last two years. Seeing Obama as an insion that has led to such statements of his competent and weak, lame duck president
in 2008: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat only makes that task harder.
as much as we want and keep our homes
November 11, 2014
on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just
expect that every other country’s going to
say okay.”
ing without knowing what they are trying
to do.
When Obama made a brief public statement about Americans being beheaded by
terrorists, and then went on out to play
golf, that was seen as a sign of political
ineptness, rather than a stark revelation
of what kind of man he is, underneath the
smooth image and lofty rhetoric.
Thomas
Sowell
2
Conservative Chronicle
2016 ELECTION: November 8, 2014
For 2016, Hillary had the worst night
W
e all know the Republican midterm landslide
was largely a repudiation
of President Obama’s policies and his
handling of the job of chief executive.
And of course, we don’t know who will
succeed him in 2016. But buried deep
inside Tuesday’s exit polls is a series
of numbers on presidential contenders
that will blow your mind. It’s completely different from most anything
you’ve seen in the newspapers, the Internet or on TV.
GET THIS. Here’s a stunning question and answer from Edison Research,
which interviewed 18,000 voters
around the country as they left the polls
on Nov. 4:
Do you think Hillary Clinton would
make a good president?
Yes: 42 percent. No: 52 percent.
Whether she’s the frontrunner or not,
a majority of midterm-election voters
don’t want her running the country.
Does that leave the door open for
other Democrats? Sure looks like it.
Does that leave the door open for a
Republican? Hang on to your seats:
Do you think Jeb Bush would make
a good president?
Do you think Chris Christie would
make a good president?
Amazing. New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie, who is also the chair of the
I guess she shouldn’t have said
Republican Governors Association, has
been widely praised for quarterbacking businesses don’t create jobs. Or maythe GOP’s tremendous election perfor- be voters remember her Russian reset
mance in the states. The GOP counted with Putin, her calling Bashar Assad a
31 Republican gubernatorial wins, “reformer” we can do business with,
“who cares” exclaeven in deep-blue Mass., Ill. and Md. or her
mation about how
But voters still
the U.S. base in
said no to ChrisBenghazi was detie.
stroyed.
But
there’s
Or maybe the
more. Hang on to
old Bill Clinton
your seatbelts:
magic is not rubDo you think
Rand Paul would make a good presi- bing off anymore. But the fact is, the
exit polls say Ole Hillary would lose
dent?
to a Republican no-name. And at the
Do you think Rick Perry would make margin, Tuesday’s election has probably re-scrambled the Republican deck.
a good president?
I’m sure not going to pick a winner
High-profile Sen. Rand Paul, who here. But given the polling weakness
has had successful early years in the of the other established candidates,
Senate, has a strong following among and the virtual collapse of Hillary, you
libertarian-like millennials, and has a have to wonder ...
crafty way of jumping on key issues,
WHAT ABOUT newly re-elected
didn’t do so well either. And Texas
Gov. Rick Perry, who many experts Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker? For
suggest has recovered from his 2012 quite a while he looked like he might
lose, but he wound up with a bigger
gaffes, also got a big thumbs-down.
But here’s the kicker — my absolute positive margin than anyone thought
possible. He won his battle against
favorite:
In the 2016 presidential election, the public unions. He cut taxes while
for whom would you be more likely to strictly limiting spending. Is Gov.
Walker, who may possess the strongest
vote?
Hillary Clinton (Dem): 24 percent. political backbone in the country, now
The Republican candidate: 40 percent. a Republican front-runner?
Or can the same be said of Ohio
That’s right. The yet-to-be-named
Gov. John Kasich? He won re-elecRepublican beats Hillary.
Larry
Kudlow
tion in a landslide, even after accepting federal Medicaid aid (unpopular
in conservative circles). But he also
found some spare budget cash to help
Ohio’s poor and stayed on the supply
side with tax cuts.
Or what about Michigan Gov. Rick
Snyder? He put the whole city of Detroit into bankruptcy to solve its collapsing financial structure and get it on
the road to recovery. He also took on
government unions and found a way
to reduce tax burdens. And he made
Michigan — the UAW’s socialist paradise — into a right-to-work state.
Or maybe Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal has jumped to the front. He campaigned for fellow Republicans around
the country while begging the GOP to
come up with a true national message
of economic growth, supply-side tax
cuts, market-oriented health care and
education-choice reform.
I’m not going to go through the
whole list. There are other Republican
governors and senators, and at least
one key policymaker in the GOP dominated House, who could be that yet-tobe-named Republican in 2016.
What’s important now is that the
midterm exit polls turned conventional
wisdom on its head. It’s not just those
awful numbers for the high-visibility
Republican hopefuls. But Hillary loses
to an unnamed name.
TO CHANNEL the great William
F. Buckley Jr., get me a phone book
and I’ll start picking her opponents.
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3
November 19, 2014
OBAMA PRESIDENCY: November 10, 2014
Extortion as conciliation: Mob tactics
I
action in the event they pass legisla- haps legalizing millions of immigrants
tion to his liking. How generous of — because it might harm Democrats.
still
became an election
him. We should all be pleased that he It
with Republicans
isn’t threatening Republican leaders i s s u e ,
hammering away
with the release
at it and winning
of compromising
resoundingly. Even
photos — yet.
a relative dove
Obama’s tack
on immigration
on immigration
(c) 2014, King Features Syndicate
like Cory Gardspeaks to a president who is out of sorts and out of step, ner, the Republican senator-elect from
and recognizes his own political impo- Colorado, opposed the Obama executence. Unable to build a political case tive action.
for one of his chief second-term prioriTHIS ELECTORAL rebuke might
ties, he has to fall back on executive
give a less highhanded president
THIS OFFER Republicans can’t usurpation.
Prior to the election, the president pause. Not President Obama. He rules
refuse includes the stipulation that the
president will revoke his executive delayed his threatened amnesty — per- from an Olympian height above mere
n a fit of postelection modesty,
President Barack Obama is offering not to take executive action to amnesty millions of illegal immigrants — provided Republicans do
his bidding on immigration.
It is extortion as conciliation. New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie often invites comparisons to The Sopranos,
but it is President Obama who is making a tactic out of the HBO mob drama
his major postelection initiative. His
bipartisan outreach now ends with a
pointed “Or else ...”
Rich
Lowry
Rethinking Hillary 2016
N
ow that two of the last
three Democratic presidencies have been emphatically judged to have been failures, the
world’s oldest political party — the
primary architect of this nation’s administrative state — has some thinking
to do. The accumulating evidence that
the Democratic Party is an exhausted
volcano includes its fixation with stale
ideas, such as the supreme importance
of a 23rd increase in the minimum
wage. Can this party be so blinkered
by the modest success of its third recent presidency, Bill Clinton’s, that it
will sleepwalk into the next election
behind Hillary Clinton?
IN 2016, she will have won just
two elections in her 69 years, the last
one 10 years previously. Ronald Reagan went 10 years from his second
election to his presidential victory at
age 69, but do Democrats want to wager their most precious possession, the
presidential nomination, on the proposition that Clinton has political talents
akin to Reagan’s?
In October, Clinton was campaigning, with characteristic futility, for
Martha Coakley, the losing candidate
for Massachusetts governor, when she
said: “Don’t let anybody tell you that
it’s corporations and businesses that
create jobs.” Watch her on YouTube.
When saying this, she glances down,
not at a text but at notes, and proceeds
with the hesitancy of someone gathering her thoughts. She is not reading a
speechwriter’s blunder. When she said
those 13 words she actually was thinking.
You may be wondering, to use eight
other Clinton words that will reverberate for a long time: “What difference
at this point does it make?” This differ-
“She is smart, tough and savvy and
has a capacity to learn from failure and
adjust. But ... people are bored of her
and feel like she has been talking at
them forever. ... She is a dull, grating,
inauthentic, over-eager, insipid elitist
with ideological blinders yet no particular vision and is likely to be reduced
to running on a dubious promise of experience and competence while faking
idealism and hope — a very common
type of presidential contender in both
parties, but one that almost always
loses.”
left, as will be the center of political
gravity in the smaller and more liberal
Democratic Senate caucus that will
gather in January. There is, however,
evidence that the left is too untethered
from reality to engage in effective politics. For example:
Billionaire Tom Steyer’s environmental angst is implausibly focused on
the supposed planetary menace of the
Keystone XL pipeline. His NextGen
Climate super PAC disbursed more
than $60 million to candidates who
shared — or pretended to in order to
get his money — his obsession. The
result? The gavel of the Environment
and Public Works Committee is coming into the hands of Oklahoma’s Jim
Inhofe, the Senate’s most implacable
skeptic about large-scale and predictable climate change driven by human
behavior.
Is Clinton the person to maintain her
party’s hold on young voters? Democrats, in their misplaced confidence in
their voter mobilization magic, targeted what have been called “basement
grads.” These are some of the onethird of millennials (ages 18-31) who,
because of the economy’s sluggishness
in the sixth year of recovery, are living
with their parents. Why did Democrats
think they would be helped by luring
anxious and disappointed young people out of basements and into voting
booths?
HER HUSBAND promised “a
bridge to the 21st century.” She promises a bridge back to the 1990s. Or
perhaps to 1988 and the “competence”
candidacy of Michael Dukakis, which
at least did not radiate, as hers will, a
cloying aura of entitlement.
The energy in her party — in its
nominating electorate — is well to her
THE LAST time voters awarded a
party a third consecutive presidential
term was 1988, when George Herbert
Walker Bush’s candidacy could be
construed as promising something like
a third Reagan term. A Clinton candidacy make sense if, but only if, in 24
months voters will be thinking: Let’s
have a third Obama term.
ence: Although she says her 13 words
“short-handed” her thinking, what
weird thinking can they be shorthand
for?
Yuval Levin, whose sharp thinking
was honed at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, is
editor of the National Affairs quarterly
and author of two books on science
and public policy and, most recently,
of The Great Debate: Edmund Burke,
Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right
and Left. He is one of conservatism’s
most sophisticated and measured explicators, so his biting assessment of
Clinton is especially notable:
George
Will
(c) 2014, Washington Post Writers Group
election results and mere constitutional constraints on his power.
The president says that he’d still
“prefer” that Congress itself change
the immigration laws. For him, this is
a positively Madisonian expression of
respect for the American constitutional
scheme.
President Obama is distressed that
the Senate passed an immigration bill
by a wide, bipartisan margin and the
House refused to take it up. Fine. That
is his right. He has legitimate means to
respond.
For one, he could have barnstormed
the country for amnesty during the
election campaign, seeking to defeat
officeholders and candidates who don’t
share his view on immigration. This is
how legislative majorities are built. Of
course, he was too unpopular even to
appear in most parts of the country, let
alone convince anyone of anything.
With the election past, he can still
build the political case for an amnesty
and pressure House Republicans to
act. If he could turn up the political
heat enough, he might make House
Speaker John Boehner buckle. This is
highly unlikely, though, given that the
country is not up in arms demanding
an even laxer immigration system.
When it comes down to it, fiat is the
only means for President Obama to
reliably get his way. His promised executive action is a substitute for democratic politics, not an exercise in it.
He says we can no longer wait on
immigration, but the reason that Republicans obtained so much leverage
over the issue in the first place is that
President Obama didn’t make it a priority in his first two years in office,
when Democrats had large congressional majorities. Other things were more
important to him. He preferred to wait.
Now that Republicans, too, prefer to
wait, he considers it an intolerable
provocation.
No matter how frustrated the president is, there is no Chagrined and Impatient Clause in the Constitution that
allows him to effectively make his own
laws when he is irked at Congress. If
so, Congress would have been neutered at the beginning. American presidents have been irked at Congress for
as long as there have been presidents
and a Congress.
WHAT PRESIDENT Obama is
threatening is not only politically
graceless — a rude gesture at the public, as Ron Fournier of the National
Journal puts it — it is a profound distortion of the mechanisms of American
government. But in a political environment defined by the reaction to his
ideological overreach and misgovernment, blackmail is all he’s got.
4
DEMOCRATS: November 7, 2014
Boomerang: The triumph of de-demonizing
A
prayer has been answered —
not for a massive Republican
victory at the polls, though
that, too. No, I’m thinking of the perennial prayer of losers: “Oh Lord, let my
enemies go too far.”
THE RESULTS of the 2014 midterms will be chewed over for weeks and
months. One datum that hasn’t received
much attention so far is the exit poll result showing that 71 percent of voters
are somewhat or very worried about another major terrorist attack in the United
States. Such is the Republican reputation
for hardheadedness on national security
that the party benefits from this concern
without breaking a sweat.
Another takeaway: The Democrats’
tactic of demonizing Republicans has
not just run its course, but it’s beginning
to boomerang. Three groups have been
particularly invited to believe that Republicans are a menace to them: women,
Hispanics and blacks.
The war on women theme worked as
recently as the Virginia governor’s race
in 2013. Terry McAuliffe won single
women voters by 42 points.
Democrats hoped to reprise the theme
this year. Here’s what went wrong. 1)
Republicans got savvy about choosing
candidates; 2) They refused to be lured
onto the Democrats’ playing field, where
the insulting assumption is that women
voters are motivated solely by gynecological concerns; and 3) Democrats
overplayed their hand.
Every Republican who opposed abortion was depicted as attempting to outlaw birth control. Republicans turned
this aside by touting over-the-counter
sale of contraceptive pills. Republicans
were accused of opposing equal pay.
They responded, archly, by noting that
women were frequently paid less than
men on their opponents’ staffs. DNC
Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said
Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker are “grabbing us by the hair and
pulling us back.”
When the votes were counted, women preferred Democrats, but only by four
points; whereas, men chose Republicans
by 16 points. Schultz will be rubbing
elbows on Capitol Hill with Barbara
Comstock, Mia Love, Shelley Moore
Capito and Elise Stefanik, among other
newly elected Republican women. If she
bumps into Iraq War veteran Joni Ernst,
the latter can explain what real war is
like. Sandra Fluke, the “war on women”
pinup, was defeated, along with abortion
warriors Wendy Davis and Mark Udall.
JUST AS Democrats assume women
voters care principally about below-thewaist issues, they believe Hispanic voters can be corralled by immigration reform. The 2014 results suggest that they
may have taken this too far, as well.
In state after state, including Texas, they’re not the deporting ogres DemoGa., Kan. and Colo., Republicans gained crats have conjured. It didn’t hurt that
ground with Hispanic voters. According Abbott’s Hispanic mother-in-law cut
to Mark Hugo Lopez of Pew, “Latinos ads for him. The party’s image is also
identified less with the Democratic Par- burnished
by the re-election of
ty and a growing share identified with G o v s .
Susana
Martinez
Republicans.”
and Brian SandoTexas Governorval.
elect Greg Abbott
Finally,
even
spent money and
the great, perni(c) 2014, Creators Syndicate
time campaigning
cious constant in
in heavily HisAmerican politipanic districts and was rewarded with cal life — the race card — seemed a
44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Kansas little worn around the edges this year.
Gov. Sam Brownback pocketed 47 per- The Democrats trotted out their election
cent, as against 46 percent for his Dem- year one-trick pony: In Arkansas, leafocratic opponent. In Colorado, Cory lets distributed in black neighborhoods
Gardner soft-pedaled immigration in referenced Ferguson and said, “Repubfavor of jobs and smaller government, licans are targeting our kids, silencing
while Sen. Mark Udall was preoccupied our voices and even trying to impeach
with abortion.
our president.” In North Carolina, a raShowing up on Spanish radio and dio ad attempted to link Thom Tillis to
TV has helped Republicans to convince the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
a growing number of Hispanics that They had no effect.
Mona
Charen
It would be ludicrously optimistic to
predict the imminent demise of solid
Democratic voting by African Americans. But note these straws in the wind:
Liberal black commentators like Tavis
Smiley, Juan Williams and Charles Ellison have questioned both the Democrats’ race baiting and the Obama administration’s record on jobs, incomes
and other measures of well-being for
blacks and all Americans. Videos like
“Rebel Pundit” denouncing Democrats
for the state of cities like Detroit are
making the rounds. This is ... new.
DEMOCRATS WENT too far. The
sex, race and ethnicity gambit is sounding forced, stale and desperate. Republicans should make efforts to win every
constituency: women, men, Hispanics, blacks, Asians, everybody. Let the
Democrats be content with their base:
NARAL, ACORN and the press.
REPUBLICANS: November 5, 2014
GOP must seize midterm momentum
T
he Republican Party now has
a once-in-a-generation opportunity to define its brand by
passing legislation through both houses
of Congress. Even if President Obama
vetoes the bills — as he will — they will
answer the nagging question among the
voters: What does the Republican Party
stand for?
Conventional political consultants
will be content to luxuriate in the negative image Obama has created for himself and for his party. But the wiser leaders of the GOP will realize that it is only
by articulating a programmatic alternative that Republicans can really seal the
deal with the majority of Americans.
NOBODY PAYS attention to political platforms or candidate speeches.
White papers from campaigns are best
for lining wastebaskets. The media
won’t cover one-house bills passed by
Republicans knowing that the Senate
will never assent.
But if the Republicans pass serious
legislation through both houses of Congress, the media has to take it seriously.
And if these bills are in sync with the
concerns of most Americans, it will only
be to the advantage of the GOP if Obama
vetoes them.
Republicans in the House have
amassed a considerable body of good
proposals that passed the House but
Harry Reid has refused to bring up in the
Senate. More are lying on desks in committee, ready to be reported out.
The GOP should declare its own “100
days” and pass a comprehensive set of
proposals to capture the attention and
admiration of the American people.
THE LEGISLATION should include:
— Approval of the Keystone oil pipeline.
— Repeal of limits on natural gas
exports to Europe to fight Russian influence there.
— An override of Obama’s forthcoming executive order ending
certain deportations.
Dick
Morris
— Corporate tax reform to lower
rates and repeal deductions.
— Regulation of derivatives.
— An end to the carried interest tax
break.
— Repeal of special treatment for illegal immigrant children who show up
at the border from Central America.
— A flight ban on arrivals from West
Africa while Ebola remains a danger
there.
— Privacy legislation to rein in the
National Security Agency.
— Completion of a border fence with
Mexico.
— Over-the-counter contraception
sales.
—New sanctions on Iran unless it
meets certain congressionally required
thresholds for dismantling its nuclear
program.
— Requiring the Department of
Commerce to renew its contract with the
Internet oversight group ICANN to forestall a United Nations takeover.
— Repeal of the one-sided regulations adopted by the National Labor Relations Board.
— Rejecting the Law of the Sea and
Arms Trade treaties in the Senate.
—Repeal of the “death panel” Medicare Payment Advisory Board and repeal
of the medical device tax in Obamacare.
— Barring Environmental Protection
Agency greenhouse gas rules and repealing subsidies of renewable sources
of energy.
— Reinforcing the ban in the Affordable Care Act against forcing the
cancellation of grandfathered policies.
Congress should specify that no changes
in policies or premiums can evade the
application of this ban.
MOST OF this ambitious agenda
will meet with the approval of both the
moderate and the tea party wings of the
party. With a minimum of posturing
and squabbling, the Republican leadership of Congress should move to enact
it and to seize the initiative away from
the Obama administration. Obama’s vetoes will come to stereotype his administration and the Democrats as the real
Party of No — an appellation too often
appended to the GOP in the past. And
they will tie the hands of the Democratic
nominee in 2016. If it is Hillary Clinton,
she will have to disavow the vetoes to
win the swing vote even as she has to
embrace them to court the party base.
5
November 19, 2014
OBAMA PRESIDENCY: November 6, 2014
The president still doesn’t have a clue
P
resident Obama and the
Democrats were hit by a ton
of bricks on Tuesday, and it
couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch of losers.
Even a ton of bricks understates
what the voters did to Obama and his
party. A political earthquake was more
like it, and they’re still reeling from the
political aftershocks.
It was not just a massive repudiation
of the president’s harmful and unpopular policies on the economy and health
care, and his incompetent, hands-off
management of a wasteful, scandalplagued government.
IT WAS ALSO a nationwide repudiation of the Democrats, who have
remained cruelly silent throughout six
years of a painfully sluggish, high-unemployment economy that their votes
had inflicted on the country.
The voters demoted Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid to powerless minority status by putting the GOP firmly in
control of that chamber and strengthening their majority in the House.
But the voters’ crushing rejection of
the Democrats was not only in the nation’s capitals, but in the governorships,
too. Especially in deep-blue, tax-happy
Democratic states like Md., Mass. and
Ill., pushing up the GOP’s gubernatorial majority to at least 31, very close to
historic levels in the modern era.
Equally important, the Republicans’ sweeping victory extended to
the state legislatures, where they took
control in Nevada, Colorado’s Senate, there to say?” said David Krone, chief
and House chambers in Minn., N.M., of staff to Senate Democratic Leader
Maine, W.Va. and N.H. At this writ- Harry Reid.
Yet the day after his party’s defeat,
ing, it means the GOP will control 67
was Obama in the
chambers, a new record, and hold full t h e r e
White House press
political control of
room,
battered,
24 states where
bloodied and beatthe party will hold
en, but spouting
the governorships
the same snake
and state legisla(c) 2014, United Media Services
oil remedies that
tures.
Congress refused
Heading into
the final weeks of the midterm elec- to enact and the American people had
tions, Obama boastfully told Ameri- just overwhelmingly rejected.
“I hear you,” Obama told the voters
cans what was at stake in this elecWednesday.
But according to Washtion in a speech that had GOP officials
cheering and Democratic strategists ington Post columnist Dana Milbank,
“Their message went in one presidenasking, “How could he be so stupid?”
“I am not on the ballot this fall. ... tial ear and out the other.”
But make no mistake — these poliWHILE OBAMA was clearly the
cies are on the ballot, every single one
of them,” he said about his unpopular architect of his policies, he did not
acknowledge his own unpopularity or
agenda.
His egotistical admission spread like accept any blame whatsoever for his
wildfire throughout every GOP cam- party’s losses. Nor did he for a moment
paign team in the country. But what suggest that maybe he ought to rethink
voters heard was that the Democrats on his legislative proposals and change
their ballots represented his policies, course.
“Do you feel any responsibility to
and they voted against them in a tidalwave election that swept his party out recalibrate your agenda?” asked Assoof power and effectively killed what- ciated Press reporter Julie Pace.
No, he suggested, falling back on
ever remained of his unfulfilled agenda
in the final two years of his presidency. the same-old small-bore ideas that
Discouraged Democrats on Capitol have been widely discredited and were
Hill were no longer the least bit reti- going nowhere in Congress.
“A minimum wage increase, for excent about who was really responsible
ample,” he replied, was “something
for their humiliating demise.
“The president’s approval rating is I talked about a lot during the cambarely 40 percent. What else more is paign.”
Donald
Lambro
When Congress asked the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, its
fiscal and economic forecasting arm, to
analyze Obama’s proposals, it warned
that his idea had one huge and painful
drawback: Millions of struggling smallto medium-size businesses would be
hurt by higher payroll expenses. At a
minimum, the CBO forecast, Obama’s
higher wage mandate would kill between 500,000 to one million jobs.
Throughout this year, as he had in
previous years, the president boasted
that the economy was much improved,
but exit polls Tuesday showed that for
most voters, the economy and jobs was
their No. 1 concern.
Nearly a third said the economy is
getting worse, while another third said
it hadn’t changed much. Overall, seven
in 10 voters said the economy was in
bad shape.
But when Obama was asked if he is
now thinking about any new proposals,
he sounded woefully unprepared, as if
he had never given it any thought.
“Every single day, I’m looking for,
‘How can we do what we need to do
better?’” he said.
Then, an exasperated Ed Henry of
Fox News said, “I haven’t heard you
say a specific thing during this news
conference that you would do differently.”
Obama, who hasn’t the faintest idea
what he could do differently, said it
would be “premature” for him to answer that question. He wanted to “hear
from the Republicans” first when they
meet in the White House.
But the Republicans’ agenda by now
is pretty well known. They want to
pass a revenue-neutral tax reform bill
to cleanse the tax code of costly corporate welfare and other tax loopholes in
exchange for lowering income tax rates
across the board to accelerate faster
growth and job creation.
They want to re-enact fast-track
trade authority to open up new export
markets for American goods, legislation that Obama and the Democrats
have blocked since day one. U.S. exports fell further last month, weakening
economic growth.
They want to approve the Keystone XL pipeline that the president
has blocked, preventing thousands of
jobs from being created. And repeal
key parts of Obamacare that are hurting businesses, stunting job growth and
raising health insurance premiums.
Senate Republican leader Mitch
McConnell and House Speaker John
Boehner will lay this out when they
meet on Friday.
ONLY THIS time, the Republicans are holding all the high cards, and
Obama has an empty hand.
6
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: November 7, 2014
Make DC listen: Voters reject illegal alien rewards
E
nough is enough. An impor- to circumvent them,” said the group Protant bloc of voters made their tect Oregon Driver Licenses. “Oregon is
voices heard on Tuesday. Their the only state in the country that (gave
the) opportunity to
message: Quit rewarding people who c i t i z e n s
vote on giving drivviolate our immier cards to those
gration laws. They
who cannot prove
chose a sovereign
legal presence in
nation over an illethe United States.”
gal alien sanctuary
If only every state
nation, and they
had the power of
told politicians in
both parties loud and clear: Put Ameri- initiative and referendum. Ten states, including Calif., Conn., Colo., Ill.., Md.,
cans first.
Nev., N.M., Utah, Vt. and Wash., plus
Will DC listen?
the District of Columbia, “have had the
THESE VOTERS are tired of politi- law forced upon them with little or no recians creating magnets for illegal immi- course available to them.”
Listen up, DC: The Oregon proposal
grants. They’re tired of preferential treatment for defiant border-crossers, visa went down in flames by more than a
overstayers and deportation fugitives. 2-to-1 margin. More voters weighed in
They’re tired of the heavy costs and conon Measure 88 than any other single cansequences of the government’s systemic didate or question on the ballot, includrefusal to protect its borders and fully ing the campaigns for governor, U.S.
senator and marijuana legalization.
implement interior enforcement.
Who supported Measure 88? Entitled
Pay attention, both parties in the Beltway: These aren’t voters in a red-state ethnic lobbyists, immigration lawyers,
bastion. They’re fed-up voters in bright American worker-betraying labor unions
blue Oregon — a whopping 941,042 of like the SEIU and UFCW, the ACLU,
them, to be exact — who overwhelm- the militant Movimiento Estudiantil Chiingly rejected a ballot measure to provide cano de Aztlan, agricultural interests,
special driver’s licenses “without requir- NARAL, far-left church leaders, soft-oning proof of legal presence in the United illegal-immigration newspaper editorial
boards, and some business-pandering
States.”
When Democratic Gov. John Kitzha- Republicans.
ber and radicals in the state legislature
PRO-AMNESTY ACTRESS and
tried to push through illegal alien driver’s cards against the will of the people, Barack Obama campaign finance bundler
the people struck back and forced a full Eva Longoria’s “Latino Victory Project”
public vote and electoral accountability. forked over $50,000 to the pro-Measure
“Citizens expect our lawmakers to up- 88 PAC. The open-borders campaign
hold our laws, not work at finding ways raised a whopping $500,000-plus from
Michelle
Malkin
its deep-pocketed Big Government/Big
Business/Hollywood patrons.
Who opposed the referendum? Grassroots citizens and a majority of commonsense sheriffs in Oregon who were outspent 10-to-1.
The police, sheriffs and border patrol
agents who opposed Measure 88 forcefully connected the dots between immigration enforcement and homeland security. As I’ve reported repeatedly over
the years, driver’s licenses are tickets
into the American mainstream. They allow residents to establish an identity and
foothold into their communities. They
help you open bank accounts, enter secure facilities and, yes, board planes.
Remember:
— The 9/11 hijackers obtained some
364 separate pieces of identification, including driver’s licenses, in order to conduct their murderous business. Hijackers Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar
conspired with illegal alien day laborers
at a Falls Church, Va., 7-Eleven to obtain
government-issued photo IDs. Three other hijackers obtained IDs at an Arlington,
Va., DMV.
— In Boston, suspected al Qaeda
agent and illegal alien Nabil al-Marabh
obtained a license permitting him to
drive semi-trucks containing hazardous
materials, including explosives and caustic materials.
The anti-Measure 88 law enforcement officers were joined by Derek Hernandez, vice president of the Western
Region National Border Patrol Council,
and Maria Espinoza, national director of
The Remembrance Project. Espinoza is a
Mexican-American activist whose group
“is dedicated to honoring and remembering Americans who have been killed by
illegal aliens.” As she pointed out to Oregonians, “Americans are neither allowed
nor do they expect being able to provide
unverifiable documentation when applying for licenses, jobs, voter registrations,
loans or any of the many activities requiring proper identification. Why should illegal aliens be afforded this ill-begotten
privilege?”
Pro-Measure 88 advocates disingenuously argued that the law was “pro-public
safety” because it would allow Oregon to
know who is living in the state. But Espinoza correctly notes that Mexican government offices embedded in the U.S.
continue to issue shady “matricula consular” identification cards “without proof
of identity, in their efforts to achieve quasi-legal status for Mexican illegal aliens
in the United States.”
As President Obama and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce conspire in Beltway backrooms to provide tens of millions of work permits for illegal aliens
through administrative fiat, the new GOP
majority on Capitol Hill better heed the
defeat of Measure 88.
Cynthia Kendoll, president of Oregonians for Immigration Reform, spoke
for law-abiding voters across the country who are “sick and tired of big business, special interest groups and unions
controlling our government.” They’re
tired of government-manufactured chaos, government-sponsored double standards and government-imposed benefits
for millions of law-breakers who supply
cheap labor and cheap votes to bipartisan
special interests. Illegal alien driver’s licenses are a catalyst for politically driven
amnesty, Mexico’s poverty exportation
plan and corporate wage suppression.
AMERICAN VOTERS of all backgrounds, political affiliations and incomes don’t want any part of that racket.
Enough.
7
November 19, 2014
It turned out to be a tough night at MSNBC
A
(The only person who had a worse
fter Tuesday night, Republicans’ main objective is clear: night on Tuesday than MSNBC’s Rachel
Convince Oregon Measure 88 Maddow was Marco Rubio, who just
lost the only argument for not primaryto run for president.
in 2016.)
Measure 88 won more votes than ing him
Republicans won
anything else on
every possible Senate
the Oregon ballot.
and governor’s seat,
More votes than
but one: long-shot,
pot legalization.
come-from-behind
More than the in(c) 2014, Ann Coulter
Scott Brown in
cumbent
goverNew Hampshire.
nor, the incumbent
senator or any of the six other ballot A month ago, no one thought we’d even
measures. The widely popular, landslide be talking about New Hampshire on
vote on Measure 88 prohibits illegal im- election night.
But Brown was such a fantastic canmigrants from getting driver’s licenses.
In the nightmare scenario for MS- didate, aggressively denouncing amnesNBC, by midnight Tuesday night, Re- ty and open borders, that he managed to
publicans had 52 Senate seats — 53 with single-handedly turn a safe seat for the
their probable win in the Louisiana run- Democrats into a bloodbath. He is surely
off in December, 54 if they win Alaska responsible for at least one Republican
and 55 if they win Virginia. And I’m not Senate win by forcing Democrats to divert precious resources to New Hampeven counting Democratic flips.
shire.
Without many silver linings, all of
DON’T YOU wish all these new
Republicans were joining Republican MSNBC’s bitterness election night was
senators Richard Lugar, Mike Castle directed at Scott Brown.
An angry Rachel Maddow repeatedly
and whatever Republican was running
against Todd Akin? How about Rob told her little joke about Brown being the
Simmons in Connecticut, who would first man to lose to two women in two
be the senator from Connecticut if self- states. Hey, Rachel: Martha Coakley just
serving GOP consultants hadn’t gone for became the first woman in the same state
the money-bags, unelectable candidate to lose to a man in two elections for two
different offices — senator and goverinstead?
Without tea party challenges and nor!
It was a tough night for Rachel. For
greedy Republican consultants, Republicans would be looking at 59 Senate seats those of you who haven’t seen her show,
in the next Congress. Maybe 61 with words cannot capture the giggling,
smirking, cutesy antics that accompany
Democrat flips.
One more wave election, and it her remarks.
wouldn’t matter who the president is.
EXACTLY TWO months ago, RaAnd what if the money and energy
wasted this year saving incumbent sena- chel was hyping Princeton’s Sam Wang,
tors Mitch McConnell, Thad Cochran who, in 2012, “correctly predicted all
and Pat Roberts from tea party challeng- 33 U.S. Senate races”! I don’t rememes had been spent on Senate elections in ber those being that hard to predict, but
N.H., Va. or Minn.? These guys weren’t it impressed Rachel. “According to Sam
Arlen Specter! They weren’t even John Wang’s calculations,” Maddow smirked
on Sept. 3, “the odds of the Democrats
McCain or Marco Rubio.
Ann
Coulter
holding onto the Senate nationwide for
the whole country, those odds move to
85 percent.”
Election results by midnight Tuesday:
— Senate Republicans: 52
— Senate Democrats: 44
Less than a month ago, Rachel devoted several shows to a complicated argument about how the Democrats could
win the Senate election in South Dakota.
“Now, today, the new unthinkable,” she
began. “The Democratic Party today just
announced that, hey, South Dakota is
hereby a contested race. South Dakota.
Democrats all of a sudden think they can
maybe win in South Dakota. ... Woohoo!”
Tuesday night election results in
South Dakota:
— Republican Mike Rounds: 51.1
percent
— Democrat Rick Weiland: 29 percent
One month ago, Rachel was gloating
about Kansas governor Sam Brownback
heading to defeat because of his experiment with “massive” tax cuts. “The result of Sam Brownback’s experiment,”
she said, “is, number one, that Kansas
is broke. Number two, that Sam Brownback is losing his re-election bid to a centrist Democrat who warned that Kansas
couldn’t afford those cuts.”
Tuesday night election results in Kansas:
— Sam Brownback: 49.9 percent
— Paul Davis: 46.1 percent
Rachel on Arkansas, earlier this year:
“Basically the unanimous Beltway
common wisdom was Mark Pryor, Democratic senator from Arkansas, was definitely going to lose this year. ... Except
that it is not at all what happened. Check
this out. Mark Pryor has been polling 10
and 11 points ahead of this Tom Cotton
guy who is running against him. Senator
Pryor is up in this race by double digits.”
(Translation of “this Tom Cotton
guy:” magna cum laude graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School; second
lieutenant in the U.S. Army; infantry of-
ficer and platoon leader with the 101st
Airborne Division in Iraq; U.S. representative from Arkansas.)
Tuesday night election results in Arkansas:
— Tom “This Guy” Cotton: 56.5 percent
— Mark Pryor: 39.5 percent
And what ever happened to A-Star-IsBorn, Wendy Davis? MSNBC spent all
of 2013 telling us she was going to be the
next governor of Texas.
Rachel began referring to Davis’ opponent, Greg Abbott, as the man “best
known as the Republican running for
Texas governor against Democrat Wendy
Davis.” On June 26, 2014, Rachel spent
airtime commemorating the one-year
anniversary of Davis’ filibuster for abortion!
Tuesday night election results in Texas:
— Greg Abbott: 59.4 percent
— Wendy Davis: 38.9 percent
I could go on and on. Rachel sneering
about Thom Tillis, Rachel giggling about
Mitch McConnell, Rachel laughing at
Nathan Deal, Rachel mocking Rick
Scott, Rachel dismissing Scott Walker.
INSTEAD, LET’S review a few of
Tuesday’s highlights:
— A former House impeachment
manager is now governor of Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas.
— The deep blue states of Maryland
and Massachusetts will now have Republican governors.
— Republicans have just elected: the
youngest member of Congress (Elise Stefanik of New York); the first black female
representative from Utah (Mia Love); the
first black senator from the South since
Reconstruction (Tim Scott). The two
black senators from the South before that
were also Republicans, as was the first
black senator from the North, Edward
Brooke.
— Americans really don’t want driver’s licenses for illegal aliens.
— Sandra Fluke lost.
8
The shrinkage of the Obama majority
Some observations on the election:
“Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomor(1) This was a wave, folks. It will be row,” was released in 1977. That will be
a benchmark for judging waves, for ei- 39 years ago in 2016.
ther party, for years.
(3) The combination of Obama’s
(2) In seriously contested races, Re- low job
approval and Harry
publican
candiReid’s virtual shutdates were generdown of the Senate
ally younger, more
insured a Republivigorous,
more
can Senate majorsunny and optiity. Reid prevent(c) 2014, Creators Syndicate
mistic than Demoed amendments
crats. The contrast
— Mark Begich
was sharpest in Colorado and Iowa, of Alaska never got to introduce one
which voted twice for President Obama. — that could have helped them in camCory Gardner and Joni Ernst seemed to paigns.
be looking forward to the future. Their
Votes were blocked on issues with
opponents grimly championed the stale clear Senate majorities — such as the
causes of feminists and trial lawyers of Keystone XL pipeline, medical device
the past.
tax repeal and the bipartisan patent reform bill backed by Judiciary Chairman
DEMOCRATS SEE themselves as Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
the party of the future. But their policies
That left Democrats running for reare antique. The federal minimum wage election stuck with 95-plus percent
dates to 1938, equal pay for women to Obama voting records. It left them with
1963, access to contraceptives to 1965. no independent votes or initiatives to
Raising these issues now is campaign point to. Reid kept Democratic candigimmickry, not serious policymaking.
dates well-stocked with money. But not
Democratic leading lights have been with winning issues.
around a long time. The party’s two
(4) Democratic territory has been recongressional leaders are in their 70s. duced to the bastions of two core groups
The governors of the two largest Demo- — black voters and gentry liberals.
cratic states are sons of former gover- Democrats win New York City and the
nors who won their first statewide elec- San Francisco Bay area by overwhelmtions in 1950 and 1978.
ing margins, but are outvoted in almost
This has implications for 2016. Hill- all the territory in between — including,
ary Clinton, the likely Democratic this year, Obama’s Illinois. Gov. Jerry
nominee, worked in her first campaign Brown ran well behind in California’s
in 1970. She has been a national figure Central Valley, and Gov. Andrew Cuosince 1991. The Clintons’ theme song, mo lost most of upstate New York.
Michael
Barone
Democratic margins have shrunk
among Hispanics and, almost to the vanishing point, among young voters. Liberal Democrats raised money to “turn
Texas blue.” But it voted Republican by
wider than usual margins this year.
UNDER OBAMA, the Democratic
base has shrunk numerically and demographically. With superior organization, he was able to stitch together a
51 percent majority in 2012. But like
other Democratic majority coalitions
— Woodrow Wilson’s, Lyndon Johnson’s, even Franklin Roosevelt’s — it
has proved to be fragile and subject to
fragmentation.
(5) In many states — including many
carried twice by Obama — Republicans
have been governing successfully, at
least in the estimation of their voters.
Gov. Scott Walker has won his third victory in four years in Wisconsin against
the frantic efforts of public employee
unions.
Gov. John Kasich won a landslide
victory against a flawed opponent in
Ohio, and Gov. Rick Snyder won solidly in Michigan after signing a right-towork law hated by private sector unions.
In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott’s second
consecutive one-point victory means
that Republicans will be in control for
20 years in what is now the nation’s
third-largest state.
Democratic governance, in contrast,
was rebuked by the voters in Massachusetts, in Maryland (with the nation’s
fourth highest black population in percentage terms) and in Obama’s home
state of Illinois.
(6) The Obama Democrats labor under the illusion that a beleaguered people hunger for an ever-bigger government. The polls and the election results
suggest, not so gently, otherwise.
The fiasco of healthcare.gov, the
misdeeds of the IRS, the improvisatory
warnings of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention — all undermine confidence in the capacity of big
government. Looking back over the last
half-century, the highest levels of trust
in government came, interestingly, during the administration of Ronald Reagan.
(7) This election was a repudiation
of the big government policies of the
Obama Democrats. It was not so much
an endorsement of Republicans as it
was an invitation to them to come up
with better alternative policies.
IN THE STATES, some Republicans
have. At the national level, they are just
getting started. We’ll see how they do.
9
November 19, 2014
GOP wave debunked big myths about Obama era
Guess what. Voters don’t really hate
“obstructionism.” They hate the other
party.
If we’re to believe the media-authored account of the past six years,
the GOP has made rigid obstructionism of Barack Obama’s policies its sole
agendum. In victory and in concession
speeches, candidates of both parties
still claim that “dysfunction” has been
the biggest problem in Washington.
WHERE EXACTLY have Republicans suffered for their stubbornness?
The reality is that Republicans have
been generously rewarded for their
tenacity in stopping post-Obamacare
progressive policy. Since 2010, the Re-
publicans have pulled together a his- some broad reaction to a broken Washtoric string of victories — with scores ington — a revolt against incumbency
of seats changing hands in the House. and politics in general.
Though it’s true that most voters tell
If anything, what we learned is that
they abhor the bickerpoliticians are far likelier to be penal- pollsters
ing in Washington,
ized by the elecaccording to exit
torate for passing
polls more than a
unworkable and
third of those who
overreaching legvoted for a Repubislation than they
lican congressioare for stopping it.
That’s just one myth we function un- nal candidate claimed to be dissatisfied
or angry with GOP leaders in Conder in Washington.
Another talking point we heard a lot gress. And a quarter of those who voted
leading up to the midterm elections, Democratic claimed they were dissatmost notably from Fox News Chan- isfied with Obama. The reality is that
nel’s Juan Williams, revolved around only one party was punished. American
the idea that we were experiencing voters didn’t oust incumbents; they
David
Harsanyi
What Republicans must do now
U
nlike the dog that chased the
car until, to its consternation, he caught it, Republicans know what do with what they have
caught. Having completed their capture
of control of the legislative branch, they
should start with the following six measures concerning practical governance
and constitutional equilibrium:
— Abolish the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau. This creature of the
labyrinthine Dodd-Frank law violates
John Locke’s dictum: “The legislative
cannot transfer the power of making
laws to any other hands. ... The power
of the legislative ... [is] only to make
laws, and not to make legislators.” The
CFPB is empowered to “declare,” with
no legislative guidance or institutional
inhibitions, that certain business practices are “abusive.” It also embodies
progressivism’s authoritarianism by
being, unlike any entity Congress has
created since 1789, untethered from all
oversight mechanisms: Its funding, “determined by the director,” comes from
the Federal Reserve.
— Repeal the Independent Payment
Advisory Board. This expression of the
progressive mind is an artifact of the
Affordable Care Act and may be the
most anti-constitutional measure ever
enacted. It certainly violates the first
words of the first section of the first article of the Constitution: “All legislative
powers herein granted shall be vested
in a Congress.” The IPAB’s purported
function is to achieve the ACA’s purpose of cost containment by reducing
Medicare spending. When the IPAB’s
15 presidential appointees make what
the ACA calls a “legislative proposal”
limiting reimbursements to doctors, this
proposal automatically becomes law
unless Congress passes a similar measure cutting Medicare spending. Under
this constitutional travesty, an executive branch agency makes laws unless
the legislative branch enacts alternative
means of achieving the executive agency’s aim. The ACA stipulates that no
measure for the abolition of the IPAB
can be introduced before 2017 or after
Feb. 1, 2017, and must be enacted by
Aug. 15 of that year. So, one Congress
presumed to bind all subsequent Congresses in order to achieve
George
Will
progressivism’s consistent aim — abolishing limited government by emancipating presidents from restraint by the
separation of powers. This impertinence
by the 111th Congress requires a firm
rebuke by the 114th.
— Repeal the ACA’s tax on medical
devices. This $29 billion blow to an industry that provides more than 400,000
jobs is levied not on firms’ profits but
on gross revenues, and comes on top of
the federal (the developed world’s highest) corporate income tax, plus state and
local taxes. Enough Democrats support
repeal that a presidential veto might be
overridden.
— Improve energy, economic and
environmental conditions by authorizing construction of the Keystone XL
pipeline. The pipeline would reduce the
risk of spills by reducing the transportation of oil in railroad tankers.
— Mandate completion of the nuclear waste repository in Nevada’s Yucca
Mountain. The signature achievement
of Harry Reid’s waning career has been
blocking this project, on which approximately $15 billion has been spent. So,
rather than nuclear waste being safely
stored in the mountain’s 40 miles of
tunnels 1,000 feet underground atop
1,000 feet of rock, more than 160 million Americans live within 75 miles of
one or more of the 121 locations where
70,000 tons of waste are stored.
— Pass the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS)
Act. It would require that any regulation with at least a $100 million annual
impact on the economy — there are approximately 200 of them in the pipeline
— must be approved without amendments by joint resolution of Congress
and signed by the president. “In effect,”
writes the Hudson Institute’s Christopher DeMuth, “major agency rules
would become legislative proposals
with fast-track privileges.” By requiring legislative complicity in especially
heavy federal burdens, REINS is an ingredient in the recipe for resuscitating
Congress, which has been far too eager
to cede legislative responsibilities to the
executive branch.
SUCH MEASURES may be too
granular to satisfy the grandiose aspirations of those conservatives who, sharing progressives’ impatience with our
constitutional architecture, aspire to
have their way completely while wielding just one branch of government. But
if, as is likely, the result of Congress doing these and similar things is a blizzard
of presidential vetoes, even this would
be constructive. The 2016 presidential
election would follow a two-year demonstration of how reactionary progressivism is in opposing changes to the nation’s trajectory. Congressional actions
provoking executive rejections would
frame the argument about progressivism. And as Margaret Thatcher advised,
first you win the argument, then you win
the vote.
ousted Democrats. If Sen. Pat Roberts,
R- Kan., could come back to win his
race against a candidate whose entire
rationale for running was to end partisanship, this was about holding not all
elites accountable but Democrats.
FOR MONTHS, we’ve been also
hearing how Democratic losses could
be chalked up to “structural” problems. The map was the problem! “In
this election cycle, this is probably
the worst possible group of states for
Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower.
There are a lot of states that are being
contested where they just tend to tilt
Republican,” Obama told a local radio
station.
That was an arguable contention to
start with, but it was certainly shattered
by the results. Moreover, you can’t
have it both ways. When the president
wins, his victory is driven by issues.
When Democrats lose, they are untethered from policy or party. That myth
can be put to bed. In 2012, Obama won
Colorado 51.49 percent to 46.13 percent. Today 55 percent of voters there
have a negative view of the president.
While liberal Sen. Mark Udall was
beaten handily, a less liberal governor, John Hickenlooper, a man who
was lucky enough never to have had to
vote for Obamacare, squeaked it out. In
Iowa in 2012, Obama won 51.99 percent to 46.18 percent, but Republican
Joni Ernst won the Senate seat held by
retiring Democrat Tom Harkin. Md.,
Ill. and Va. were all Obama country in
2012 and all saw surprisingly competitive races or worse.
When you break it down, this may
have been one of the least “structural”
losses for any party in a long time.
ANOTHER MYTH we heard
for weeks leading up to the elections
was that Republicans had abandoned
Obamacare as an issue. Turns out some
of the biggest winners in the most
competitive states — Cory Gardner in
Colorado, Ernst in Iowa — were fullthroated critics of the Affordable Care
Act and never shied away. According
to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media
Analysis Group, Obamacare ads dominated TV and radio. The GOP ran about
13,000 Obamacare ads in Senate races
in one week leading up to Election Day.
When was the last time a single piece
of legislation dominated a midterm in
that way? No doubt Democrats will
continue to argue that historic Republican gains had nothing to do with the
most discussed legislation in America.
But it is far more plausible that Obamacare has fathered two colossal-wave
elections by the GOP in a mere four
years — which, by any measurement,
makes it the least popular federal law
in our lifetimes.
10
DOUBLE STANDARD: November 11, 2014
When Republicans win, politics are ‘dysfunctional’
S
ince the Bolsheviks inaugu- slide does the vote reflect dysfunction.
Here is the first sentence of New York
rated the first edition of their
party newspaper Pravda (the Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s
Russian word for truth), the left has post-election column:
“Let’s face it: The American political
shaped truth to serve its goals. On an
broken.”
individual level, there are plenty of pro- system is
Here is the first
gressives who are
sentence of New
honest and plenty
York Times columof conservatives
nist Tom Friedwho aren’t. But
man’s post-electruth is just not a
tion column:
left-wing value —
“We’ve just had a nonsense midterm
feminism, environmentalism, material
equality, and fighting racism, sexism, election.”
According to the left, the lopsided
homophobia and Islamophobia are far
Republican win last Tuesday wasn’t a
more important.
repudiation of the Democratic Party,
THE MYRIAD falsehood-based let alone of its belief in ever-expandhysterias unleashed by the left in our ing government. Rather it was a repucountry — the alleged heterosexual diation of “Washington’s dysfunction.”
AIDS epidemic in America, the num- The voters were sending a message, the
ber of homeless people, the number argument goes, not to Democrats, but
of deaths from anorexia, the current to Washington. The message? That they
charges of a “war on women” in our are sick of the inaction and dysfunction
society and of a “culture of rape” on there.
A second explanation on the left
American college campuses, the immediate assertion that the killing of a is related to the first. The elections
black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri were a repudiation of Congress. Thus,
was caused by racist police — testify to Kristof’s second sentence: “A poll last
the left’s cavalier attitude toward truth. year found Congress rated lower than
The latest shaping of truth is almost cockroaches.”
I checked that poll. It is no wonder
funny because the left’s claims are so
transparently self-serving. Since last Kristof didn’t cite the name. Readers
Tuesday’s elections, commentator after might ask, “What poll is that?” and
commentator on the left has declared “Cockroaches? Are you serious?” It
American politics “dysfunctional.” was conducted in October 2013 by an
When Democrats win by a landslide, obscure polling group, “Pubic Policy
the left regards the vote as testimony Polling,” that showed that Americans
to the great message of the left and the prefer cockroaches to Congress.
Does Kristof really believe that?
good sense of the American people.
Only when Republicans win by a land- Doesn’t anyone not predisposed to
Dennis
Prager
believing in self-serving explanations
not recognize how absurd that is? Who
prefers cockroaches to Congress? And
that poll gets even more absurd: Americans, it claims, “have a lower opinion
of [Congress] than ... hemorrhoids and
even witches.”
BUT IT WAS so important to
Kristof to explain last week’s vote as
a rejection of Congress and Washington dysfunction that he favorably cited
such transparent nonsense.
Another example of the Democrats’
dishonesty regarding the election is
that of President Obama.
As the Washington Post reported,
“Despite saying repeatedly that his
policies were on the ballot Tuesday,
Obama insisted Wednesday that the
message of the election wasn’t a rejection of those policies.”
How does anyone, let alone a president, say “Make no mistake: These
policies are on the ballot. Every single
one of them” shortly before an election, and thoroughly deny that on the
day after the elections?
There is one incontrovertible proof
that all this talk about the election’s being about a dysfunctional Congress —
in the president’s words “a sign that the
American public wanted politicians to
work together to get things done” — is,
to put it nicely, phony. That proof is the
state elections. People don’t vote for
their governor or for their state assemblies because of how they feel about
Washington and its alleged dysfunction.
Yet the Democrats were trounced
in state after state elections, including
some of the most liberal states.
As reported by the National Conference of State Legislatures on Wednesday, Democrats lost their majorities in
the West Virginia House, Nevada Assembly and Senate, New Hampshire
House, Minnesota House, New York
Senate, Maine Senate, Colorado Senate, Washington Senate and New Mexico House. The vote also increased the
number of state legislative chambers
with Republican majorities to 67 from
57 (out of a total of 99).
Tim Storey, the bipartisan group’s
election analyst, observed, “Democrats
will control the lowest number of state
legislatures since 1860.”
Not to mention the fact that Republican governors were elected in such
liberal states as Mass., Ill. and Md. and
retained in liberal Mich. and Wis.
ALL BECAUSE of Washington
dysfunction?
Apparently, the left really believes
its version of truth.
For America’s sake, let’s hope they
continue to do so through 2016.
11
November 19, 2014
This is the last chance for Republicans
T
his off-year election shellacking that Obama took was
his second in six years. The
Democrat Party has been hemorrhaging
seats in every election but his own.
In 2010 the Democrats lost the
House in one of the most embarrassing and lopsided drubbings in some 70
years. Now, in 2014, history not only
repeated itself, but it did so with double
exclamation points.
THAT BEING the case, one is
forced to wonder how support for
Obama’s policies was able to spell the
end of their careers for so many but not
spell the end of Obama? I know this is
the point that the “he stole the election”
choirs start to warm up, but I did not
believe that to be the case in 2012 and
I do not believe it to be the case now.
I believe the reason he survived both
election (white-guilt notwithstanding)
and re-election is because conservative
voters recognized John McCain and
Mitt Romney for what they were and your face” turn of the century union
corruption mentality. However, I have
said no to them both.
But while that makes for cogent dis- come to realize that’s not the case. The
that both parties are two
course, I ask the question: “What did the truth is
the same coin.
Republican Party accomplish after the sides of
Sadly, not enough
historic landslide
people witnessed nor
victories in 2010
are they aware of
and what can we
the vicious machiexpect them to do
(c) 2014, Mychal Massie
nations
orchesnow?”
trated behind the
The
answer
is that the only thing the Republicans scenes that were intended to thwart the
accomplished in the aftermath of the will of We the People vis-a`-vis who got
2010 victories was what Obama wanted elected. Even though marplots such as
them to accomplish. That goes from the Karl Rove, Reince Priebus, John McCodebt-ceiling concessions to Republicans nnell and the rest of the Republican hierintroducing and passing legislation in- archy worked to undermine many of our
tended to strengthen Obamacare and choices for election, their skullduggery
Republicans working feverishly to pass — my focus has now shifted to what can
we expect from them now that they have
amnesty.
I used to be of the mindset that Repub- won the Senate.
licans just didn’t know how to engage
THOSE OF us who work the front
in guerrilla or trench warfare. I used to
think they were just too “country club” lines of politics are aware of the dastardand that Democrats had that “smash ly machinations of Mitch McConnell
Mychal
Massie
The Democrats’ Obama problem
D
emocrats began telling themselves demography is destiny
back in 1968 after Richard
Nixon’s election. They have been saying it ever since. That day may eventually arrive, but today is not that day.
They may also believe they are a permanent party, but history is filled with
Ozymandias like permanence.
LAST TUESDAY’S voter turnout
should not give the Democrats the comfort they have taken from it. As should
now be obvious, the Democrats have no
coalition of their own. It is controlled by
the very man who, the day after CurbStomp 2014, went on national television
to stomp his feet in retaliation, rhetorically show voters his middle finger and
behave generally like a petulant manchild. Democrats have a Barack Obama
problem.
Republicans, now making kissy-face
with Democrats and pledging “to work
together,” should tread carefully. Most
anyone who worked too closely with
Barack Obama in the past few years
has suffered the fate of the dodo bird
— hunted mercilessly to extinction. At
least 25 Senate Democrats who voted
for the president’s health care plan now
have the title “former” preceding their
title “Senator.”
From Mass. to Md. to Ill. and more,
pundits who two years ago cheerfully
described the Republican Party as a “regional party” mostly in the South, had
to bitterly and through gritted teeth admit a crimson wave swept the country. It
started, interestingly enough, in Guam.
Fifteen or so hours before the polls began closing domestically, that American
territory saw Republicans capture it.
The tsunami only grew as it began making landfall in Maine. Most commentators expected Republican Gov. LePage
to lose. He did not.
Erick
Erickson
In Florida, where virtually every poll
showed Charlie Crist would take back
the Governor’s Mansion, Gov. Rick
Scott held on forcing Crist and his oscillating fan to find a new wind direction.
The savage destruction of the Democrats leave that party in the fetal position
mumbling their safe words, “demography” and “turnout.” One word that is no
longer safe is “Obama.”
THE DAY after the election, President Obama’s press conference descended into farce. He declared he will
do what he wants, veto what he does not
want and will work with the Republicans
only to the extent they do what he wants.
A man who has been given everything in
life on a silver platter cannot be expected
to act graciously when the platter is finally taken away. But President Obama’s
defiant and petulant tone last Wednesday
suggests he is a president in search of
new voters who will appreciate it.
Americans should, therefore, not be
surprised if by executive fiat the president ushers in a new class of American
— the illegal alien. Christian sinners
may be washed in the blood of the lamb,
but President Obama intends his Cult
of Personality to be washed in the red
wake of a Republican take over. An action he could not take before the election
because of its deep unpopularity will be
taken after the election because he needs
new disciples.
What can the Democrats do? They
have been renting Obama’s coalition.
Should they distance themselves from
President Obama, they will anger President Obama’s base. Should they embrace President Obama, they will anger
everyone else. Hillary Clinton will have
a hard time running a big government
campaign when Americans no longer
trust big government. But should she try
to claim government was not the failure,
just Obama, she will have to fight him
for votes. Democrats comforting themselves on low turnout in 2014 ignore that
they will have to have a civil war to capture President Obama’s base from him
in 2016.
PRESIDENT OBAMA will not go
quietly. The Democrats will have to deal
with this, their own problem of their own
creation. Jesus Christ so loved the world,
he suffered so that those who believe
in Him might live. In Barack Obama’s
world, Obama so loves himself, so we
must all now suffer that he might live on
politically relevant. God help us all.
and Karl Rove to sabotage fundraising
for true conservative candidates in favor
of feckless RINOs. We are aware that
John Boehner worked behind the scenes
to sabotage the investigations into Fast
and Furious and to shield Eric Holder
from prosecution. We are aware of former Congressman Eric Cantor’s attempt
to deceive We the People with phony
legislation making it appear Republicans had fought to defund Obamacare
when in fact they had been responsible
for funding it. We are also aware that
Cantor’s trick could not have taken place
(even though it failed) without the blessing of Boehner.
If Republicans, as I fully expect, betray us as they did in 2012, they will find
themselves dead to us. Rove and Priebus think they can move the Party to the
left and maintain our support. Jeb Bush
wants us to embrace a big tent where all
ideologies are welcome.
I want Rove and Priebus to tell me to
my face that they pulled off these historic election results without the help
of Christian conservatives? I want Jeb
Bush to tell me what makes us any different than Democrats if we are going to
support the same things they do?
The Republicans have no reason for
not reining in Obama the final two years
of his term. Republicans have sat silent
as Obama opened our borders allowing
every form of disease, gangs, and drugs
to cross into our country. They have sat
silent as Holder has run the Justice Department like a black Klu Klux Klan.
Republicans have sat silent as Obama
has transpicuously violated the Constitution at will. They blustered and pontificated but in the final analysis they’ve
done nothing to bring this Administration to justice for Fast and Furious or the
murders Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty,
Sean Smith, and Ambassador Stevens
that Obama permitted in Benghazi. Republicans have made excuse after excuse for the Debt Ceiling increases, the
payroll tax debacle, and Obama’s unconstitutional meddling in the Middle East.
They have sat silent as Obama has used
Executive Orders to bypass Congressional authority. Republicans are out of excuses. It
is time for them to act like the Party of
Lincoln and Reagan or it is time for us
to completely divest ourselves of them
going forward. Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan’s famous Goldwater speech, Republicans
“have a rendezvous with destiny.” They
will either preserve for our children this,
the last best hope of man on earth, or
they will sentence them to make the next
step into a thousand years of darkness.
IF THEY, as their actions already
indicate, capitulate to the left and allow
Obama unrestrained unconstitutionality,
it is up to us to make them pay dearly.
12
DATA MINING: November 12, 2014
Big truthy is watching (some of) you
T
his week, President Obama
launched a prominent social
media campaign on behalf of
“net neutrality” and urged the FCC to
“keep the Internet free and open.”
The man has gall.
This is the same speech-squelcher in
chief whose administration snooped on
reporters; vengefully audited tea party
pro-life activists and conservative election watchdogs and slow-walked the
probe into the IRS witch hunt against
them; entertained a government scheme
to monitor story selection in TV newsrooms; and forked over $1 million to a
researcher building a Twitter-snooping
database.
ON MONDAY, House Committee on
Science, Space and Technology Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, requested that the National Science Foundation send him all information about
how and why the taxpayer-subsidized
“Truthy” data-mining project came into
existence. Its lead researcher is Filippo
Menczer — professor of informatics and
computer science and the director of the
Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research at the Indiana University
School of Informatics and Computing —
who is now on sabbatical at Yahoo! Labs.
Menczer and Indiana University vehemently deny that Truthy is a “political
watchdog,” a “government probe of social media,” “an attempt to suppress free
speech or limit political speech or develop standards for online political speech,”
“a way to define “misinformation,” a
partisan political effort, “a system targeting political messages and commentary
connected to conservative groups,” “a
mechanism to terminate any social media
accounts,” or “a database tracking hate
speech.”
But Menczer himself admits the project arose after he learned about a conservative Twitter bomb campaign against
failed Senate Democratic candidate Martha Coakley in 2010. His informationgathering system bears liberal comedian
Stephen Colbert’s neologism “truthy.”
And the Washington Free Beacon’s
Elizabeth Harrington reports that Menczer “proclaims his support for numerous
progressive advocacy groups, including
President Barack Obama’s Organizing
for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the
Sierra Club, Amnesty International and
True Majority.”
In presentations to academic groups,
Menczer has specifically highlighted his
team’s research on conservative groups,
individuals and hashtags. I’ve seen it. At
Harvard University’s “Truthiness Conference” in March 2012, for example, he
showed his audience the results of monitoring and mapping the hashtag “#obamacare” and singled out the D.C.-based
Heritage Foundation for using it. His government-funded database mined informa-
THE GOAL, Menczer explained,
tion on who was retweeting #obamacarelabeled tweets and pinpointed “patterns is to “detect” Twitter users’ themes and
memes “early before damage is done —
of propagation.”
we’re trying to do.”
Menczer and company also policed that is what
will “automatically
Twitter users who opined that Obama T r u t h y
detect language,”
supported
poliand its overseers
cies that promote
will conduct “senSharia law. Truthy
timent analysis” to
targeted pro-Sarah
control and prevent
Palin tweets and
“damage.”
tweets using the
Nope, no political goals or ideological
hashtag “#tcot” — which stands for “Top
Conservatives on Twitter” and which agenda there. Nothing to see here. Run
I’ve used since 2009. The government- along.
Menczer defends against leftwing bias
funded researchers also went after opponents of Delaware Democratic Sen. by claiming that “almost all of the most
Chris Coons, as well as a “Republican popular hashtags, the most active acactivist in Pennsylvania” whose Twitter counts, and the most tweeted URLs, are
account was then shut down after Truthy from the right. We looked really hard for
identified tweets that included web links any ‘truthy’ memes from the left.”
Look harder, pal.
to John Boehner’s official congressional
As conservative radio giant Rush Limleadership page.
Michelle
Malkin
baugh and his staff discovered (no tax
grant money necessary), the astroturfed
social media boycott campaign against
his show for the past several years has
been spearheaded by only 10 Twitter users who account for almost 70 percent
of all “StopRush” tweets to advertisers,
amplified by illicit software. Moreover,
they found, “almost every communication from a StopRush activist originates
from outside the state of the advertiser.”
These lib bots constitute “a small number
of extremists sending tens of thousands
of tweets and other messages” to bully
and intimidate advertisers.
YET, THERE hasn’t been a peep
about the insidious #StopRush smear
campaign from Menczer and his Obama
administration-backed liberal snitch
squad. It’s time for some truth in Truthy
advertising.
POLLSTERS: November 6, 2014
What the pollsters missed
I
’ve been called a lot of things
over the years, but “biased for
the Democrats” has generally not
been one of them.
But that’s what I and other pollsters
were labeled following Tuesday’s elections by statistical gurus such as Nate
Silver of ESPN.
What’s that? You’ve never heard of
Nate Silver? Well, don’t worry; neither
has 99 percent of America. The other
one percent probably relied on his lousy
statistical forecast and bet that Brazil
would win the World Cup earlier this
year. (They got routed.)
BUT NATE is right. Pollsters, in
general, got 2014 wrong. My firm, InsiderAdvantage, polled only Georgia.
Our final poll had the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, David Perdue,
leading the race 48 percent to 45 percent
over the Democrat, with the rest either
undecided or going to the Libertarian
candidate. But darn it, we just couldn’t
force the undecided voters to tell us how
they would vote!
Of course, we nailed it on who was
in the lead. And our polls showed the
Democrat fading fast. But if we had
just put the screws to the undecideds we
polled, we might have been able to extract enough data to realize the magnitude of what was about to happen.
That meant on Election Day, when
Michelle Nunn, daughter of former U.S.
Senator Sam Nunn, lost to Perdue by a
53-percent-to-45-percent margin, our
firm, along with all other pollsters, were
forced to walk the political plank and
atone for our sin of not nailing the race
down to the very percentage point.
Silver is indeed right. Most pollsters
polled with a Democratic “bias” this
year. But his argument is slightly less
sinister than one might imagine. He
doesn’t accuse us of being partisan or
“cooking” our numbers. What he is really saying is that, for whatever reason,
the voter turnout models that we used
to weight our polls were too favorable
to groups that would tend to support
Democrats. Not to mention his belief
that some of us are incompetent.
Matt
Towery
But I sort of want to thank Nate.
He and the gaggle of liberal journalists who are sniping at pollsters have
helped take away the final vestige of
suspicion with regard to our firm’s
and other pollsters’ ability to be objective. With me having been a Republican elected official who chaired state
and national campaigns for the likes of
Newt Gingrich, it seemed like it would
take a lifetime for some in the media
to stop treating me as an escaped GOP
convict turned pollster/analyst.
SO IN ANSWER to those who
wonder why companies like mine were
only close to being right, instead of being dead on, here is my answer.
The American people cannot stand
Barack Obama. They dislike his policies. They dislike his “above it all”
demeanor. And they rose out of their
chairs and off their couches and came
out in droves to defeat anyone who
they thought was even remotely supportive of him or his administration.
Yep, I was one of those dumb pollster/analysts who thought that no president in a midterm election could possibly be as big of a drag on candidates
as was Obama. But I was wrong. He
wasn’t just a drag; he was his own voter turnout machine for Republicans.
The fact is that too many Americans
wanted to vote to make it clear that the
emperor has no clothes. And they did
so. After all, the polls had shown that
they are unhappy about Obamacare,
Ebola, the IRS, ISIS — you name it.
And it wasn’t a matter of frustration
with “all politicians,” as some in the
media tried to spin it. It was the president and his policies. Period.
And so they raced to the polls in
mass numbers and decided that they
would do whatever they could to rescue their nation before it was regulated
and red-taped to death.
As for the technicalities of polling
and all of its problems, that’s for the
next generation to figure out. As I wing
my way back to my home in Florida,
polling is hardly a concern of mine.
Like my friend and colleague Brad
Coker of the polling firm Mason-Dixon
put it, we have other lives, and besides,
we care more about college football
right now.
I’ll even take Mr. Silver’s predictions into account when it comes to the
NCAA football championship playoffs.
SEE, NATE? I’m not as biased or as
stupid as you think!
13
November 19, 2014
OBAMACARE: November 11, 2014
A smoking gun for us ‘stupid American voters’
R
ecently, a very disturbing vid- tral. His administration talked out of
eo emerged that contains the both sides of its mouth in characterizing
variously as a tax and
metaphorical smoking gun the bill
as a penalty, dependconcerning Presiing on which label
dent
Obama’s
served his interests
many lies about
at the time. Team
Obamacare. This
Obama assured
should
remove
us that employerany
lingering
based plans would
doubt that we’re
dealing with a fascist-type administra- not be wedged out.
No one should need further proof of
tion.
these multiple and oft-repeated lies, but
OF COURSE, there should be no should you need more, there is indeed
need for a smoking gun, because it is more — and it’s explosive and hot off
now undeniable that Obama lied on his the presses.
The Daily Caller reports that in a
major selling points about the Affordable Care Act. Unlike many Democrats newly surfaced video, Obamacare arin falsely accusing President George W. chitect Jonathan Gruber, an MIT proBush of lying about Iraqi weapons of fessor, made some stunning admissions
mass destruction, I don’t use the term concerning how the administration presented the bill and how it overtly de“lie” lightly.
I don’t mean that Obama made good- ceived the public because the bill never
faith statements about his bill that he would have passed otherwise.
To understand the administration’s
honestly believed at the time but would
later turn out to be erroneous. I am not contempt for the American people, it is
even suggesting that he made promises important for you to watch the video.
he knew would be difficult to fulfill that (It’s on YouTube, titled “GRUBER:
he ultimately could not. I am saying that ‘Lack of transparency is a huge politihe made statements that he knew to be cal advantage.”) But in case you cannot,
here is what Gruber said: “This bill was
false when he made them.
Obama said countless times, despite written in a tortured way to make sure
knowing better, that if Americans liked (the Congressional Budget Office) did
their health care plans and their doctors, not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO
they could keep them. He said that aver- scored the mandate as taxes, the bill
age health care premiums for a family dies. OK? So it’s written to do that. In
of four would decrease by some $2,500. terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had
He said his bill would be budget-neu- a law which said healthy people are go-
David
Limbaugh
ing to pay in — you made explicit that
healthy people pay in and sick people
get money — it would not have passed.
... Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the
stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.
... Look, I wish (health economist) Mark
(Pauly) was right (that) we could make
it all transparent, but I’d rather have this
law than not.”
YOU CAN SEE the mindset that
these people have. There is no mistaking it. They know better than we “stupid” American people what is good for
us, so they’ll do whatever is necessary,
OBAMACARE: November 10, 2014
GOP alternative to Obamacare
T
he Supreme Court decision to
hear challenges to the legality
of giving subsidies to families and individuals who signed up for
Obamacare through federal exchanges
could lead to the de facto repeal of the
program. And, with the Republican victory in the midterm elections, the next
step could be the passage of the Republican version of Obamacare -- an excellent piece of legislation that the country
will happily accept.
THE REPUBLICAN alternative to
Obamacare, passed by the House but,
obviously, never brought up for a vote
in the Democratic Senate, provides tax
credit subsidies for all who need them
to buy health insurance and incorporates the basic consumer protections
embedded in the Affordable Care Act.
Insurers cannot discriminate based on
pre-existing conditions under the GOP
bill nor can they either terminate coverage or raise rates when their customers
become ill.
A particularly important provision of
the bill extends Medicare coverage to
those who are sickest with the highest
medical bills, so the government pays
for all their costs.
struck down by the Supreme Court,
seven million or more Americans will
be out of health insurance entirely.
Most will have once had adequate policies for which they paid themselves,
only to find that Washington forced the
cancellation of their policies and made
them buy insurance on the federal exchanges. Having gotten more coverage,
at a higher cost, than they could either
afford or need, they became dependent
on the federal subsidies the court will
have just thrown out.
Obama and the Republican Congress
will have a moral and political imperative to restore their coverage. They and
most of America will approve of the
Republican alternative and Obama will
be unable to veto it with the presidential elections looming.
WOULD OBAMA veto the Republican bill?
Much as his veto pen will be itching to do so, he really won’t be able to
use it. Once Obamacare subsidies are
SO THE OBAMACARE saga will
have had a happy ending with a good
bill filling a gap in our health care coverage. And all the wrangling will seem
to have been so unnecessary.
But the Republican alternative eliminates the coercive aspects of Obamacare. Nobody has to buy insurance nor
does any employer have to offer it. And
those who do purchase insurance can
get as much or as little coverage as they
want. One size will no longer attempt
to fit all.
Dick
Morris
including purposely deceiving us, to advance their political agenda.
This is the stuff of outright tyrants
— arrogant, unaccountable, cavalier
despots. This is political fascism. This
is not representative government. This
type of behavior nullifies the Constitution and disenfranchises the American
people.
It’s one thing to have strong ideological views. It’s altogether another to
impose those views at any cost and in
derogation of the people’s rights. This
is who this president is. These are the
people he surrounds himself with.
Obama and his team are not chastened, much less repentant, over the recent election results. They remain undeterred, and they intend to continue using
whatever means they deem necessary, in
their self-assessed superior wisdom, to
accomplish their political ends, beginning with immigration.
It’s hard to believe that this man was
ever elected and exceedingly harder to
believe he was re-elected, but it is now
quite clear that even he and his team
believe he wouldn’t have been able to
achieve re-election or advance much of
his agenda had he been truly honest and
transparent about his aims and the effects of various bills.
If you were unaware of or in denial
about Obama’s character and his willingness to deceive and act against the
will of the American people before —
despite other smoking guns, such as
those concerning his lies on the Benghazi, Libya, attacks — you have no excuse now.
TWO DANGEROUS years remain
in Obama’s term. Even Democrats who
might agree with many of Obama’s remaining agenda items have a duty to
oppose his further abuse of our system,
including on immigration. But whether
or not they step up, it is imperative that
Republicans take a hard line against any
such corrosive acts against the rule of
law and our Constitution.
14
The kumbaya temptation is strong
Nov. 4 was a national vote of no confi- invariably this means move in the same
old direction, if a bit more slowly.
dence in Barack Obama.
Consider several areas where the kumHad a British prime minister received
a vote like this, he would have resigned baya temptation is strongest.
The first is the rising clamor from Corby now.
The one issue on which all Republi- porate America for the newly empowered
licans to grant Obama
cans agreed, and all ran, was the rejection Repubfast track authorof Obama. And by
ity and support his
fleeing from him,
Trans-Pacific Partsome even refusnership
Agreeing to admit they
ment.
voted for him,
Fast
track
Democrats, too,
were conceding that this election was would be a unilateral surrender of Conabout Obama, and that they were not to gressional authority, yielding all power
to amend trade treaties to Obama, and
blame for his failures.
leaving Congress with a yes or no vote
YET, THOUGH this was a refer- on whatever treaty he brings home.
This would be a Republican ratificaendum on Obama and his policies, and
though both were repudiated, some pun- tion of the policies of Bush I and II that
dits are claiming that America voted for produced $10 trillion in trade deficits,
an “end to gridlock” and a new era of hollowed out our manufacturing base,
and sent abroad the jobs of millions of
compromise and conciliation.
How so? If the American people were Reagan Democrats.
Globalization carpet-bombed Middle
truly saying that, why did they vote to
turn the Senate over to Mitch McCon- America and killed the Nixon-Reagan conell? Why did they vote to send more Re- alition that used to give the GOP 49-state
publicans to strengthen the hand of John landslides.
Why would Republicans return to that
Boehner and those in the House who had
Bush-Clinton-Obama policy that ended
“shut down” the government?
Did America vote for the GOP to the economic independence of Eisengo back to Washington and work with hower’s America?
The party should re-embrace economObama? Or did America reward the GOP
for promising to return and continue to ic patriotism, stand up to Japanese protectionists and Chinese currency manipuoppose Obama’s policies?
lators, and put American workers first,
Is the answer not obvious?
What Republicans are hearing now is ahead of corporate outsourcers.
Immigration reform is a second area
the siren song of a Beltway elite that just
got its clock cleaned, an elite that revels where the GOP is being urged, even by
in Republican defeats, but is ever at hand some of its own, to compromise. In reto give guidance and counsel to Republi- turn for Obama agreeing to improve border security, Republicans will be asked to
cans when they win.
And that counsel is always the same: go along with amnesty for millions here
Time to put the acrimony behind us. illegally.
But did any Republican run on amnesTime to reach out and take the extended
hand of the defeated. Time come together ty? Is the nation demanding amnesty? If
to end gridlock and move forward. And not, then who is?
Pat
Buchanan
Answer: corporate America, Obama,
La Raza and the editorial pages of newspapers that routinely brand Republicans
as xenophobic bigots.
Republicans should pass a stand-alone
border-security bill, and then dare Senate Democrats to filibuster it and dare the
president to veto it.
That the Islamic State is brutal, barbaric and anti-American is undeniable. But
its occupation of northern Syria and western Iraq is the problem primarily of Syria
and Iraq, and their neighbors in Lebanon,
Turkey, Iran, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia and
Jordan.
This is, first and foremost, their war,
not ours.
As Army Chief of Staff Ray Odierno said last week, “The long-term war
against [the Islamic State] needs to be
fought by the indigenous capability there.
It needs to be fought by Iraqis. It needs
to be fought by Syrians. It needs to be
fought by other Arabs, because it’s their
country and they need to win that back.”
Before succumbing to the kumbaya
temptation, Republicans should ask themselves not how to find common ground
with Barack, but how to get America out
of this Slough of Despond.
IF OBAMA declares an executive
amnesty for five million illegals, as he
threatens, he can credibly be charged will
defying the manifest will of the nation
and usurping Congressional power. The
GOP would then be within its rights to
declare all-out political warfare.
Let voters decide in 2016 whether invaders should be rewarded with paths to
citizenship or whether presidents should
be duty-bound to defend the border.
A third temptation will be Obama’s request for Congress to formally authorize
the war he has begun in Syria and Iraq. If
the GOP signs on, the party will own that
AND ANYONE who thinks last
war going into 2016, as it owned the Iraq Tuesday was a call to compromise with
war going into 2006, when it lost both Obama has either an ax to grind or a serihouses of Congress.
ous hearing problem.
ANSWER MAN: November 8, 2014
The An s wer Man
ROCKING THE VOTE
VOTING IN THE U.S.
1. Which amendment to the U.S.
Constitution reads in part, “The Electors shall meet in their respective
states, and vote by ballot for President
and Vice President, one of whom, at
least, shall not be an inhabitant of the
same state with themselves?”
2. What does the term “midterm
penalty” refer to?
3. Voter ID laws may require a voter to show government-issued photo
identification at a polling place. How
many states have such laws?
4. Which amendment to the U.S.
Constitution prevents any United
Dawn
SeamansShook
States citizen from being denied the
right to vote on the basis of sex?
5. The 17th Amendment established
direct election of United States senators by popular vote. How had senators
been elected prior to the ratification of
this amendment?
(answers on page 19)
15
November 19, 2014
What can we expect from the new Senate?
R
epublicans won a big victory
in the midterm elections, so
big that the media are calling
it a “wave.” Is President Obama planning to cope with this by “working together” and “bipartisanship?” The New
York Times gave us his answer on the
front page.
BARACK OBAMA arrogantly announced the day after the election that
he is “vowing to bypass Congress and
use his executive authority to handle
the nation’s immigration system.”
Obama renewed his commitment “to
act on his own to allow millions of undocumented immigrants [i.e., illegal
aliens] to stay in this country.”
Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
responded by saying, that’s “like waving a red flag in front of a bull.” That’s
right, Mitch. It’s surely not a route to
bipartisanship or working together
with the newly elected Republicans. The American people are over- any funds for Obama’s harebrained
whelmingly in favor of closing our schemes such as assuming the burden
borders, building the fence that Con- of curing disease in Africa. That’s not
gress approved years ago, and reject- what we elected him for.
In its
report, the Wall
ing admission to our country of illegal
Street
Journal
aliens and persons
certified
that
with awful disObama’s execueases.
tive amnesty will
Instead of issugive work permits
ing an order that
to illegal immipeople
coming
ing jobs directly
from Ebola-infected countries will not grants, takbe allowed to deplane in the United from struggling Americans. The SenStates (which Obama could easily do ate’s expert on immigration issues, Jeff
and would cost nothing), he is now Sessions (R-AL), added, “Based on
asking Congress to appropriate $6 Bil- the USCIS contract bid and statements
lion to combat Ebola in West Africa! from USCIS employees, we know this
That’s so offensive that it’s hard to executive immigration order is likely
believe he said it, but if the New York to be broader in scope than anyone has
Times reported it, he must have said it. imagined.”
The Wall Street Journal also reportMaybe the new Republican majority doesn’t have the power to stop ed that Obama will especially benefit
nonsense announcements, but Repub- technology companies that use large
licans surely can refuse to appropriate numbers of foreign workers, even
Phyllis
Schlafly
MINIMUM WAGE: November 5, 2014
Minimum wages vs. maximum wages
Progressives have such low expectations of people — especially Americans.
They believe that the average person wouldn’t be able to feed himself
and his family without federal subsidies, food stamps and a menu dreamed
up by Michelle Obama.
I thought about this after clicking on
a link to a story in the New Pittsburgh
Courier headlined “Raising minimum
wages wound be benefit economy.”
“Raising minimum wages wound
be benefit economy?” What does that
mean?
IT WAS SO fascinating I decided
to read the story to determine what on
earth the headline was supposed to say.
(I was thinking of suggesting this
as a technique to my editors at WorldNetDaily — write headlines that make
no sense to draw the curious to click.
I thought better of it when I realized
the most likely explanation for this incomprehensible headline is that it was
written by an editor making minimum
wage.)
But that was just the beginning of
my interest with this exquisite example of the low expectations of progressives.
Raising the minimum wage has become one of the top economic priorities of President Barack Obama’s and
the progressive class. They sell raising
the minimum wage to people who have
been conditioned by progressive education and progressive media to believe
that the only way they can earn more
money is for the government to extract
it by force from their employers.
It’s really sad.
Instead of painting a bold, forwardlooking economic policy designed to
create more wealth and maximize wages, the Obama progressive class seeks
to empower itself with a permanent
economic underclass dependent on the
good graces of politicians to get them
subsistence wages.
Joseph
Farah
Who wants subsistence wages? Who
wants to make a “minimum wage?”
Shouldn’t all Americans want to maximize their wages?
This is the essential difference between a party and ideology based
on “spreading wealth around” and a
worldview that seeks to create more
wealth, bake a bigger pie and grow the
economy so that all boats are lifted.
I CAN ONLY surmise from this
story in the New Pittsburgh Courier
that even the lumpenproletariat must
be catching on to the progressive scam
of minimum wages. Why? Because
this story actually provides a new reason for pushing the minimum wage —
one I’ve never heard before and one
that is even more bizarre than selling
low wages rather than high wages.
The lead of this story says, “Raising
the minimum wage to $10.10 would
though 11 million Americans with
STEM degrees don’t have jobs in those
fields.Research by Rutgers Professor
Hal Salzman indicates that, since 2000,
all net gains in employment among the
working-age have gone entirely to immigrant workers.
WE CANNOT allow Obama to
pack the Supreme Court, or continue
to pack other federal courts, with any
more left-wing supremacist judges.
If the Republican Senate lets Obama
get by with naming even one Supreme
Court appointment, he will effectively
rule our country for the next 30 years
– and that’s not what the American
people voted for.
There are still two more months of
the Harry Reid Senate, known as the
Lame Duck Session, and that’s time
for lots of judicial mischief. Republicans should adopt a strategy used
previously in similar situations to say
there simply isn’t enough time for the
Senate to do “due diligence” in investigating any new Obama appointees, especially for positions so important as a
federal judgeship.
We cannot allow Obama to violate
the Constitution under the guise of
what he calls “executive action.” The
U.S. Constitution gives the President
“the executive power,” but clearly
states that “All legislative Powers” are
“vested in Congress,” and one of those
important powers is the power over
immigration.
So, leaning on our new Republican members of Congress to prevent
Obama from taking any more unconstitutional actions in Congress’s Lame
Duck Session is an important part of
the task before us. Obamacare should
be on the table for revision since, in the
2012 elections, every victorious Republican campaigned against Obamacare, and of the 60 Senate Democrats
who voted for Obamacare when it
passed, 29 are no longer in office.
But that’s not all. We have to think
ahead about who we want the Republican Party to nominate for President in
2016, and we should get started now.
The wealthy RINOs who are trying
to be kingmakers have already started
their exclusive dinner parties to vet
candidates.
likely save taxpayers $39 billion in
spending on safety net programs per
year, according to a new issue brief by
the Economic Policy Institute.”
There’s one massively deceptive
falsehood contained in that sentence:
The federal government will not “save”
taxpayers money as long as it borrows
a third of the money it spends — or,
stated another way, spends 30 percent
more than it takes in from taxes.
There’s a second massively deceptive falsehood contained in that sentence: Raising the minimum wage always results in more joblessness; thus,
it could never lower demand for safety
net programs.
How do progressive outfits such as
the EPI come up with these theorems?
Simple! They make them up out of
whole cloth. None of it makes any economic sense — any more than did the
economic theories of Karl Marx and
Josef Stalin.
Maybe the headline wasn’t a mistake after all. Perhaps I just didn’t understand what the headline writer was
trying to say.
YOU CANNOT be a player in
Let’s take another look: “Raising
minimum wages wound be benefit choosing the next Republican nominee
for President unless you know about
economy.”
the anti-democratic tactics which the
MAYBE THE editors had a mo- powers that be might use to force on
ment of lucidity. Maybe they indeed us, such as demanding a globalist bigdo recognize that raising the minimum spending President, or another loser
wage, though sounding as if it would like the candidates they foisted on us
do something for the economy and in the past. Your best source of inforthe poor, would actually be a mortal mation is the new expanded 50th Anniversary edition of A Choice Not An
“wound.”
Echo.
Could it be?
16
November 19, 2014
Sieze the day — control the agenda
M
emo to the GOP. You had a dorsement of the GOP. The prize for
great night on Tuesday. But winning is nothing but the opportunity
remember: You didn’t win for Republicans to show that they can
it. The Democrats lost it.
govern — the opportunity to seize the
This is not to say that you didn’t national agenda.
show discipline in making the election a
Five weeks ago, I
referendum on six
suggested a series of
years of Barack
initiatives that would
Obama. You exbe like the 1994
ercised adult su“Contract
with
pervision over the
America,”
but
choice of candithis time post facdates. You didn’t allow yourself to go to. It’s not rocket science. Mitch Mcdown the byways of gender and other Connell, the incoming Senate majoridentity politics.
ity leader, and Speaker John Boehner
It showed: A gain of probably nine are already at work producing such an
Senate seats, the largest Republican agenda.
House majority in more than 80 years,
It needs to be urgent, determined
and astonishing gubernatorial victories, and relentless. Say, a bill a week for
including Mass., Md. and Ill., the bluest the first 10 weeks. Start with obvious
of the blue, giving lie to the Democrats’ measures with significant Democratic
excuse that they lost because the game support, like the Keystone XL pipeline.
was played on Republican turf.
Like fast-track trade negotiation authority that Harry Reid killed and that
THE DEFEAT — “a massacre,” the Obama, like all presidents, wants. ReEconomist called it — marks the final publicans should propose and pass it,
collapse of Obamaism, a species of left thereby giving Obama a victory and
liberalism so intrusive, so incompetent- demonstrating both bipartisanship and
ly executed and ultimately so unpopular magnanimity (as well as economic
that it will be seen as a parenthesis in good sense).
American political history. NotwithThen a simple, targeted bill to restanding Obama’s awkward denials at patriate the $2 trillion of assets being
his next-day news conference, he him- held by U.S. corporations overseas, a
self defined the election when he insist- bill to authorize and expedite the exed just last month that “these [i.e. his] port of liquid natural gas and crude oil
policies are on the ballot — every single (the latter banned by an obsolete 1975
one of them.”
law) and a strong border security bill.
They were, and America spoke. But
As for Obamacare, a symbolic aboliit was a negative judgment, not an en- tion that Obama will immediately veto
Charles
Krauthammer
is less important than multiple rapid fire
measures to kill it with a thousand cuts.
Repeal of the medical device tax. Repeal of the individual mandate. Repeal
of the employer mandate. Repeal of the
coverage mandate thereby reinstating
Obama’s broken promise that “If you
like your health care plan, you can keep
it.” And repeal the federal bailout for
insurers on the Obamacare exchanges.
both corporate and individual, abolishing loopholes and lowering rates,
like the historic Reagan-O’Neill 1986
reform or Obama’s own abandoned
Simpson-Bowles commission. And go
large: Invite the other side into immediate negotiations with the aim of producing a tax bill by spring.
How will Obama react? My guess
— with the petulance and denial he
displayed in his postelection news conIF OBAMA issues vetoes, fine. Let ference. Moreover, he will try to regain
the Democrats defend them for the next control of the national agenda with extwo years.
ecutive amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Then go big and go positive: A
Final memo to the GOP: That would
sweeping reform of the tax system, be naked impeachment bait. Don’t take
it. Use the power of the purse to defund
it. Pledge immediate repeal if Republicans take the White House in 2017.
Denounce it as both unconstitutional
and bad policy. But don’t let it overwhelm and overtake the GOP agenda.
That’s exactly what Obama wants. It is
his only way to regain the initiative.
The 2014 election has given the
GOP the rare opportunity to retroactively redeem its brand. The conventional perception, incessantly repeated
by Democrats and the media, is that
Washington dysfunction is the work of
the Party of No. Expose the real agent
of do-nothing. Show that with Harry
Reid no longer able to consign Housepassed legislation to oblivion, Congress can actually work.
Pass legislation. When Obama signs,
you’ve shown seriousness and the ability to govern. When he vetoes, you’ve
clarified the differences between party
philosophies and prepared the ground
for 2016.
TUESDAY’S VICTORY was big.
But it did nothing more than level the
playing field and give you a shot. Take
it.
November 7, 2014
This Week’s Conservative Focus
17
Republicans
How the GOP should deal with Obama’s incorrigibility
P
resident Obama’s remarks at
his postelection news conference were instructive on his
attitude about the election results and
his approach going forward.
He always pays lip service to hearing the voters’ message when his side
loses but then reveals he hears only
what he chooses to hear.
He said that what stood out to him
was that the American people had sent
the same message they had sent for the
past several elections. How can that
be?
IF HE HAD said the people had
sent a similar message to the one they’d
sent in 2010, it would have made more
sense. But what commonality is there
in the election results of 2012, when he
was re-elected, and those of 2010 and
this past week?
For the sake of argument, let’s play
along. What message did he divine
from the voters Tuesday?
Well, he said the American people
expect their elected leaders “to work as
hard as they do.” I assume he was not
interpreting the message as a rebuke for
his excessive golf playing, especially
Conservatives don’t want their electin the very moments of crisis, because
he included all elected officials in his ed representatives to work with Democrats to further grow the government
statement.
“They expect us to focus on their and restrict individual liberties and
forces. They don’t
ambitions and not ours,” he continued. m a r k e t
want the administra“They want us to
tion to continue this
get the job done.”
charade that there is
What
ambibarely a war on tertions?
Finish
ror going on.
what job? For
It is a mistake
Obama to imply
that the people share policy goals that for either side to assume that the two
can be achieved by bipartisan legisla- polarized sides of the aisle share many
tive action is as insulting as it is mis- of the same goals. You might counter
that both parties want the American
leading.
Liberals, for example, don’t want people to be more prosperous. I’m not
to work with conservatives to repeal sure that’s even true for Obama, who
Obamacare and restore market forces famously said that he’ll tell us when
to health care. They don’t want to roll we’ve made too much money. But even
back the oppressive federal regulatory if most Democrats arguably share our
state. They don’t want to simplify the goal of increasing prosperity for all
tax code and quit punishing producers Americans, they have an entirely difand businesses. They don’t want to al- ferent idea as to what policies are neclocate sufficient resources to rebuild- essary to bring this about.
ing our defense forces so that we can
THEY ARE now fixed on this biproperly conduct this growing war on
terror. They don’t want to enforce ex- zarre idea that we can grow the econisting immigration laws and secure the omy from the middle out. I have no
borders. They don’t want to defang the idea what this even means — and I’m
quite confident they don’t, either — but
Environmental Protection Agency.
David
Limbaugh
Lessons for the GOP for 2016
O
n Tuesday, Republicans won
a historic electoral victory,
sweeping away a Democratic Senate, replacing Democratic governors in blue states like Mass., Md. and
Ill., and reversing Democratic state
legislatures in Nev., Colo., Minn., N.
.M., Maine, W.Va. and N.H. Republicans now control more state legislatures than they have at any point since
the 1920s, and a bigger House majority than they have since 1928.
approximately 84 million Americans
voted for in local Congressional race.
In 2012, 108 million Americans voted
in the same races. Republicans won
about 45 million votes in the Congressional races in 2010, with Democrats
coming in far behind at 39
THE CELEBRATORY mood for
Republicans pervaded the country —
a feeling of hope, lost since President
Obama revealed himself to be just as
radical as the right suspected, has returned. That hope isn’t vain — when
a landslide of such proportion takes
place, there is something to it. The
question is whether Republicans can
capitalize on their newfound opportunity and finally make a strong move
toward winning the White House.
Therein lies the problem. Midterm
elections have historically been poor
predictors of presidential elections.
That’s because the crowd that turns out
for midterms does not mirror the crowd
that turns out for presidential elections
— those who turn out for midterms are
more highly motivated and generally
better informed. In 2010, for example,
million. In 2012, each party earned
about 54 million votes. Of the additional 24 million voters who showed
up to vote in Congressional races in
2012, 62.5 percent went for Democrats.
That means that Republicans must
not sit on their laurels.
Ben
Shapiro
FOR MANY in the commentariat,
that means that Republicans must push
forward a compromising, bipartisan
agenda. That seems to be the general
opinion of those on the political left,
who despise Republicans and who,
as the evening of Nov. 4 progressed,
strongly resembled Arnold Toht at the
end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, their
faces falling with each result.
The truth is precisely the reverse.
Republicans cannot be seen as the Par-
ty of No, as the GOP’s enemies would
have it — but they do have an obligation to turn President Obama into the
President of No. That means pushing
easily comprehended, single-issue
bills, short and clear and popular. If
President Obama wants to veto those
bills, that becomes his problem. But
Republicans should not stop passing
legislation between 2014 and 2016.
Meanwhile, Republicans must work
to exploit holes in the Democratic base.
In 2012, President Obama appealed
heavily to minority groups for strong
turnout; Hillary Clinton does not have
the same minority appeal. That means
she will focus strongly on winning
single women, and driving them to the
polls in large numbers. Republicans
should therefore push national security
issues, family freedom issues — and
they have just the right faces to do that
in Senator Joni Ernst, R-Iowa and Mia
Love, R-Utah, among others.
CONSERVATIVES CAN see a
ray of sunshine at last. Now they must
work to ensure that the ray of sunshine
doesn’t turn into another faded opportunity.
November 5, 2014
look at how they propose to achieve it:
through redistribution of existing resources. They never consider the idea
of expanding the pie; they only think
about transferring income and wealth
from certain groups to others. That’s
how they believe you grow the middle
class, as opposed to getting the government out of the way and unleashing the
innovation and industriousness of the
American people themselves through
profit and other market incentives. So
even if we agree on the goal of prosperity, we are 180 degrees apart on how to
get there.
The same is true of health care. Conservatives don’t believe that maximizing the numbers of insured is the best
way to increase access to quality care
and freedom of choice and to reduce
costs to individuals and government.
Indeed, we believe our experiences
with Obamacare already demonstrate
that these stated goals not only will not
be achieved but also will be thwarted
by increased government intervention.
The invisible hand of the market always
creates more efficiencies than the most
brilliant of central planners.
Our respective ideas on the war on
terror and foreign policy in general
couldn’t be further apart. Obama and
his team barely want to acknowledge
that we are involved in a war or that
overt acts of terrorism are terrorism.
They seem to believe that we can end
these hostilities by sweet-talking radical Islamists and keeping ground troops
out of the Middle East.
There is no end to the number of
issues on which Obama and his party
have an entirely different vision than
what now appears to be a majority of
American voters.
In his news conference, Obama revealed that whether or not he heard the
American voters, he has no intention of
changing his fixed ideological course.
That is why those in the newly elected Republican majority would be making a very serious mistake to pretend
they can work with him. They need to
present legislation to him that aligns
with conservative principles, even if his
vetoes are a foregone conclusion, and
thwart all attempts he makes to continue on the same path of increasing the
size and scope of government and subjecting us to further, existentially dangerous debt.
A REALISTIC goal for them would
be to roll back some of Obama’s damage and prevent any more while biding their time until 2016, when we can
hopefully elect a president who shares
enthusiasm for the American dream and
America’s uniqueness and exceptionalism.
November 7, 2014
18
Will Boehner give Obama everything in Lame Duck?
Can you decipher the unique language implement an unconstitutional unilateral
used by Republican leaders? Here is a amnesty granting legal status to illegal
aliens.
quick test.
By agreeing to a CR that expires on
At his first post-election press conrather than Jan. 11, the
ference, House Speaker John Boehner Dec. 11
House Republican
said: “My job is
leaders not only ento listen to the
sured that they would
American people.
not need to fight
The
American
with Obama over
people have made
any significant isit clear, they’re not
for Obamacare. Ask all those Democrats sues before the election, they also made it
Such a spending deal, which would
possible to prevent incoming Republican run through Sept. 30 of next year, would
who lost their elections Tuesday night.”
He also said: “So, the House, I’m sure, majorities in both houses from having be like the deal Republican leaders cut
at some point next year, we’ll move to any substantive say over major policy is- with Obama and Reid this past Septemrepeal Obamacare because it should be sues until at least next September.
ber.
Prior to the election, Politico pubrepealed and it should be replaced with
It would permit Obama to spend
common sense reforms that respect the lished a story based on an interview with money doing everything he truly finds
Boehner’s top lieutenant, House Major- important.
doctor/patient relationship.”
ity Leader Kevin McCarthy. Politico reAnd it would allow the new Republiported that McCarthy “would like to use can Congress to hold a string of symbolDID BOEHNER mean:
1) He intends for the House to termi- the lame-duck session to pass a long-term ic votes next year on stand-alone pieces
nate implementation of Obamacare at government-funding bill, so Washington of legislation that Obama can afford to
can begin focusing on big-picture legis- veto without shutting down the whole
some point in the next year.
2) He intends for the House to ensure lating, instead of just trying to keep gov- government or even part of it.
ernment’s doors open.”
Obamacare is implemented next year.
Obama will get substance. RepubliAt the same press conference, Boehner
cans will get symbols.
IN PLAIN English: The Republican
said: “You’ve all heard me say, starting
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama is calltwo years ago yesterday, that our im- leaders hope to cut a spending deal with ing for a different strategy. He wants to
migration system is broken and needs Obama and out-going Senate Majority actually prevent Obama from unilaterto be fixed. But I’ve made clear to the Leader Harry Reid in December before ally granting amnesty to millions of ilpresident that if he acts unilaterally on his the new Republican majorities in the legal aliens.
own, outside of his authority, he will poi- House and Senate are sworn into office.
“He must be stopped,” Sessions
son the well and there will be no chance
for immigration reform moving in this
Congress. It’s as simple as that.”
Did Boehner mean:
1) He intends for the House to stop
Obama from unilaterally and unconstitutionally granting amnesty to illegal
aliens.
uesday was a beauteous night. nell’s name and reflexively associate it
2) He intends for the House to permit
Republicans won the Senate with his infamous assertion, “The single
Obama to do so.
handily, picked up 14 House most important thing we want to achieve
Boehner also said at this press confer- seats and won gubernatorial races in is for President Obama to be a one-term
ence: “I believe that we need to ... address Mass., Md. and Ill. Good times.
president.” Though Obama and Sen.
the debt that’s hurting our economy and
Two big losers weren’t on the ballot. Dianne Feinstein later asserted that Mcimprisoning the future of our kids and San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer’s Connell made that pronouncement when
grandkids ... “
super PAC, the NextGen Climate, blew Obama was newly elected, McConnell
Did Boehner mean:
through $65 million to help Democrats uttered that sentence in an interview with
1) He intends for the House to signifi- who agree with him on climate change. National Journal’s Major Garrett in Occantly cut spending in its next long-term His money may have helped Sen. Jeanne tober 2010 — right before the
funding bill.
Shaheen, D-N.H., retain her seat, but he midterm elections.
2) He intends for the House to ap- threw $20 million at Florida’s Republiprove a new long-term funding bill that can governor, Rick Scott, and Scott still
includes all spending measures President won. Steyer went after GOP challengers
Obama truly wants.
to Sens. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Mark
If I had to take this test, I would mark Udall, D-Colo., and the Republicans
No. 2 as the answer to each question.
won. Climate change got frozen out.
Back on Sept. 18, the House RepubliDO NOT MAKE the mistake of becan leaders pushed through a short-term
BILL AND Hillary Clinton all but lieving that McConnell is a ruthless parcontinuing resolution to fund the gov- moved into Arkansas to bolster Demo- tisan gridlock lord of the same stamp as
ernment until Dec. 11. This CR punted crats — only to watch GOP Rep. Tom Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. A
all substantive issues past the election. Cotton unseat Sen. Mark Pryor and for- victorious McConnell told reporters he
It fully funded Obamacare, including mer GOP Rep. Asa Hutchinson win the wants to work on areas of agreement with
the regulation that requires individual gubernatorial race.
Obama. Right now, he complained, the
Christians to buy coverage for abortionThe big winner is Senate Republican Senate “doesn’t do anything. We don’t
inducing drugs even if though that vio- leader Mitch McConnell. Beltway sages even vote.” Quoth McConnell: “We’re
lates their religious faith. It fully funded had predicted either his fall or a narrow going to go back to work and actually
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading victory. McConnell won by a 15-point pass legislation.”
abortionist. It did nothing to stop Obama margin.
McConnell prefaced his news conferfrom using money from the Treasury to
California Democrats hear McCon- ence with a plan to improve the Senate
Terry
Jeffrey
wrote in a commentary for Politico this
week.
Obama’s amnesty, Sessions said,
“cannot be implemented if Congress
simply includes routine language on
any government funding bill prohibiting the expenditure of funds for this
unlawful purpose. This is the same way
we prevented the president from closing
Guantanamo Bay. Such application of
congressional power is ordinary, unexceptional, and used thousands of times.
“Congress has the power of the
purse,” said Sessions. “The president
cannot spend a dime unless Congress
appropriates it.”
THE ONLY way Obama can carry
out a unilateral amnesty, implement
Obamacare, or attack religious liberty
is if Boehner’s House once again gives
him the money to do.
U-turn at America’s ballot boxes
T
Debra J.
Saunders
with a more open amendment process and
stronger committees. Senators and staffers have to spend more time in Washington hashing out their differences. That’s
a marked difference from Reid. Best of
all: McConnell laid out the same ideas on
the Senate floor in January — right after
Reid invoked the “nuclear option” and
changed Senate rules to eliminate filibusters for executive branch and judicial
nominees. Rather than promise to bring a
gun to Reid’s knife fight, McConnell proposed constructive change.
In that address, McConnell cited as
his ideal Senate leader Mike Mansfield,
a Democrat who took the gavel in 1961
and spent “16 years restoring the Senate
to a place of greater cooperation and freedom.”
On Wednesday, McConnell told reporters, “There will be no government
shutdowns.” McConnell is such an adult
that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the head
scout in last year’s failed bid to “defund
Obamacare,” pointedly refused to endorse McConnell as GOP leader in a recent Washington Post interview.
THE QUESTION is: With an adult
across the table, will Obama act like Cruz
or like McConnell?
19
November 19, 2014
DEAR MARK: November 7, 2014
Tuesday night and a helping of fried crow
DEAR MARK:
President Obama sounded quite conciliatory during his press conference after
Tuesday’s whipping. Even though Democrats lost the Senate, he sounds like he’s
willing to work with Republicans as long
as they get to work and send him some
legislation. Can this attitude be maintained? — Hopeful in Nebraska
Dear Hopeful:
I’m not sure which presidential news
conference you were watching but the
President Obama I saw had the body
language of a little boy whose mom just
made him hug his sister. As far as how
long this conciliatory attitude can last,
I’d say it ended as soon as the president
walked out of the East Room.
President Obama was up to his old
tricks when he said he was “eager” to
hear Republican ideas which sounded a
lot like what he said during the Obamacare debates. Back in 2010 President
Obama spoke to a group of Republican
House members and said the following:
“What I said was in the context of health
care. I remember that speech pretty well;
it was only two days ago. I said I’d welcome ideas that you might provide. I
didn’t say you haven’t provided ideas, I
said I’d welcome those ideas that you’ll
provide.”
Once again President Obama is nothing more than a liberal in moderate’s
clothing because we all know that he did
not seek Republican input with Obamacare and I don’t think he cares today
either.
More proof of the president’s insincerity during his press conference: “I think
that every day I’m asking myself: Are
there some things I can do better? And,
you know, I’m going to keep on asking
that every single day.”
I don’t know if anybody else noticed
but President Obama didn’t answer his
own question which tells me that maybe
the messiah doesn’t think he’s
doing anything wrong.
Mark
Levy
DEAR MARK:
I am very excited about all of the Republican victories on Tuesday night but
like a lot of other conservatives I believe
Republicans can screw this up. What do
you think Tuesday’s results mean? —
Cautiously Optimistic
Dear Cautiously:
It all depends on who you listen to.
The spinmeisters on the left would have
you believe that the Republican victories
were the result of an anti-incumbent protest vote. Funny but then why didn’t Republican incumbents also lose?
Some on the right believe this was a
victory for the Republican agenda which
is also funny because there was no concise GOP message.
Your humble columnist believes that
this election was a repudiation of Barack
Obama and Democrat big government
policies plain and simple.
As for President Obama, at least publicly he’s in denial. He drug out one of
his old campaign lines during his presser
when he said “For all the cynics who
say otherwise, I continue to believe we
are simply more than just a collection
of red and blue states. We are the United
States.” That may be true Mr. President
but thanks to your “leadership” the reds
far outnumber the blues.
DEAR MARK:
Prior to Tuesday’s elections Michelle
Obama made some statements concerning blacks and fried chicken that if anybody else had made them would have
been attacked for being racist. I’m used
to President Obama playing the race card
but now the First Lady too? — Disappointed in Dallas
Dear Disappointed:
I’m disappointed as well but not surprised. The old saying desperate times
call for desperate measures comes to
mind and the Democrats were obviously
desperate.
During a television interview with Roland Martin, Mrs. Obama was imploring
blacks to vote for Democrats no matter
what. The host then asked the first lady
“Can we do soul food after we vote?”
Obama gave her seal of approval “Absolutely. I give everyone full permission
to eat some fried chicken after they vote.”
She went on “But I think that a good victory for Democrats on Tuesday should be
rewarded with some fried chicken.”
Boy times have changed. Several
years ago PGA golfer Fuzzy Zoeller’s career was nearly ruined because he made
an innocent joke about Tiger Woods and
fried chicken. But not to worry, Democrats didn’t eat fried chicken after Tuesday’s results; they had a heaping helping
of crow.
E-mail your questions to [email protected]. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy
CONTACT INFORMATION
Individual Contact Information
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Jacoby - [email protected]
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Levy - [email protected]
Lowry - [email protected]
Malkin - [email protected]
Napolitano - [email protected]
Saunders - [email protected]
Schlafly - [email protected]
Thomas - [email protected]
Will - [email protected]
Contact through Creators Syndicate
Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent
Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Stephen Chapman, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez,
Larry Elder, David Harsanyi, Terry Jeffrey, Larry Kudlow, David Limbaugh,
Dick Morris, William Murchison,
Chuck Norris, Oliver North, Dennis
Prager, Dawn Seamans-Shook, Ben
Shapiro, Thomas Sowell
Contact - [email protected]
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Ann Coulter
Contact by mail :
c/o Universal Press Syndicate
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Answers from page 14
THE ANSWER MAN
D awn S eamans - S h o o k
Need to make a correction on your mailing label?
Contact us at 800-888-3039 or email: [email protected]
ANSWERS
1. The 12th Amendment.
2. Midterm penalty is a term that
suggests that the president’s party
can only gain seats in a midterm
election under the most extraordinary of conditions.
3. Currently, 17 states require
photo ID, and 19 states have nonphoto identification requirements.
4. The 19th Amendment.
5. Under the original Article 1,
Section 3, two senators would be
chosen by the legislature of each
state.
Take “The Answer Man” to work
or to school. Challenge your friends
for “Bragging Rights.” Send your
questions and answers to: The Answer Man, Dawn Seamans-Shook,
[email protected].
20
A tired party: Same old, same old
country. Gardner won them by 50 per2008 feels long ago.
A Democratic Party that rode the cent to 42 percent.
What Udall was to the uterus, Harry
Obama wave to historic congressional
to the Koch brothers.
majorities is now saddled with a presi- Reid was
He invited the public
dent who was the
to direct its fury at
hot new thing
these two relatively
six years ago. Its
unknown
wealthy
agenda tends to be
conservative dopicayune or point(c) 2014, King Features Syndicate
nors who were
less, and its new
supposed to be
generation of leadership is the same as the old generation uniquely evil compared with the wealthy
liberal donors who funded Reid’s (very
of leadership.
As much as an indictment of President inaptly named) Senate Majority PAC.
As for issues, yes, the minimum wage
Barack Obama’s governance, the midterms were a commentary on the exhaus- is popular, but it’s not a big-enough issue
tion of the Democrats in the late Obama to drive the political debate. Its success
at the federal level depends on electing
years.
officeholders who support it, and at that
ELECTORAL REBUKES of this elemental task, Democrats failed misermagnitude usually cause some reaction ably.
in their recipients. An invigorating policy
Age is not everything, and Ronald
AS IN 2010, the Republicans have
departure. A new tone. A surprising staff
shake-up. No, President Obama made gotten another jolt of new talent. Look- Reagan projected a youthful vigor declear in his postelection news confer- ing ahead to the 2016 presidential race, spite his years. But if the Democrats are
ence, it will be more of the same, only they are brimming with young, new en- all in on Hillary Clinton, they are betting
trants on the national stage, whereas the that a restive public is really yearning
more so.
He refused any memorable charac- Democrats prepare to nominate by uni- for a familiar fixture who prominently
terization of the results, like “thumpin’” versal acclamation a 67-year-old grand- served in the Obama administration.
For all the impressiveness of the GOP
(George W. Bush after 2006) or “shel- mother who has been a major player in
win,
the Republicans don’t have a manlacking” (Obama after 2010). He wasn’t national politics for more than 30 years.
getting drawn into that game, although
“wallopin’,” “spankin’” and “whoopin’”
ASSISTED SUICIDE: November 4, 2014
were all available.
The president only gave a strong sense
of disappointment — not at himself or
his party, but at all those awful people in
Washington who care about politics and
image so much more than he does.
“Brittany Maynard died with dignity nally ill, see her as a model. AccordIt is true that midterm elections are from brain cancer,” read the headline of ing to the National Institute of Mental
inherently more favorable terrain for a press release issued by the organiza- Health, “more than 50 research studRepublicans, but if the midterms are the tion Compassion & Choices. Suffering ies worldwide have found that certain
exception that proves the rule of Demo- from a vicious form of brain cancer and types of news coverage can increase the
cratic dominance, they are a heck of an near the end, the 29-year-old died Sat- likelihood of suicide in vulnerable indiexception. Republicans control more leg- urday surrounded by family and friends viduals. The magnitude of the increase
islative chambers than at any time since in an Oregon home to which she moved is related to the amount, duration and
the 1920s. They have more House seats so that she could take advantage of Or- prominence of coverage.”
than at any time since 1928. They have egon’s assisted-suicide law. May she
more than 30 governorships, including in rest in peace.
blue Maine, Mass., Ill. and Md.
Against this tide, the Democratic mesIF MAYNARD died with dignity,
sage this year was a dog’s breakfast of then does that mean that others who do
warmed-over sloganeering, irrelevant not choose to choreograph their death
obsessions and small-bore policy pro- lack dignity? There’s no getting around
posals that couldn’t overcome the broad the language advocates have chosen;
Young supporters have taken up
discontent with the state of country.
“death with dignity” suggests that there Maynard’s cause. When I wrote on her
Notoriously, Colorado Sen. Mark is something undignified about holding case weeks ago, I received a number of
Udall campaigned as though the U.S. on to life. You’re Superman and ready emails that made the same point: How
Senate is the upper house of the Ameri- to die with a smile; that’s dignity. Or Maynard dies should be her choice.
can Congress of Obstetricians and Gyne- you are a pathetic hanger-on.
cologists.
I AGREE — and always have. MayMaynard may be the first millennial
He sought to stoke the fears of women social-media-assisted suicide in Amer- nard always had the ability to kill hernot sophisticated enough to realize that, ica. We’ve all seen her wedding pho- self, and no law could stop her. Some
no, Republican Cory Gardner wasn’t go- tos and that sweet close-up of a young 40,000 Americans kill themselves every
ing to send morality police to confiscate woman with a puppy. She was beauti- year. What Maynard didn’t have was a
their contraceptives. Udall duly ran up a ful and adventurous and kind and full California law that allowed physicians
2-to-1 margin among single women, but of life. Marilyn Golden of the Disabil- to participate so that she could choreoat the price of talking about little else. ity Rights Education and Defense Fund graph her end to be almost as pictureExit polls showed a strong plurality of fears that Maynard’s storyline will cre- perfect as her wedding.
people, 43 percent, thought the economy ate “suicide contagion” as other young
California law does provide other opis the most important issue facing the people, even those who are not termi- tions, and they truly are compassionate.
Rich
Lowry
date so much as an opportunity. They can
make the most of it only if they push a
big, bold policy agenda that addresses
the country’s economic discontents and
sets the table for 2016.
THE OBAMA Democrats are played
out, and the mantle of the party of change
and new ideas is there for the taking.
Brittany Maynard’s storybook ending
Debra J.
Saunders
Maynard could have chosen hospice.
She would have been free to refuse
treatment, with or without hospice. Palliative sedation would have been there
to ease the pain and circumvent the
painful death she feared. She could have
stayed at her East Bay home. Her family
could have been by her side.
There are no guarantees with that approach. But it does mean that the medical system isn’t upended so physicians
migrate from healers to end-of-life concierges. Most importantly, the focus of
medical care in California remains on
treating disease and relieving suffering. The state does not embrace the notion that wanting to live is undignified
or that sick people should prefer to die
than endure seizures or loss of motor
control.
WHEN FAMILIES lose a young
person, they go crazy with grief; any
distraction, even anger, can be welcome. I fully appreciate how a young
woman would want to find a cause to
give meaning to her end. But if Maynard’s death helps to change California
law, be clear that the brave new order will spell abandonment for lonely,
vulnerable people. These people need
friends and family who make them feel
wanted, not undignified
21
November 19, 2014
Two hidden factors in the 2014 campaign
L
ooking back on the 2014 election cycle, I see two largely
unnoticed turning points that
worked against Democrats and in Republicans’ favor.
The first came in response to the October 2013 government shutdown. This
was blamed, as shutdowns usually are,
on Republicans, partly because of their
skepticism about big government, and
partly because media professionals tend
to fault the GOP in any partisan fight.
THE SHUTDOWN occurred because about 40 Republican House
members refused to support a continuing resolution funding the government
without a proviso defunding Obamacare. Texas freshman Sen. Ted Cruz
had been barnstorming the country arguing that this would somehow delay
Obamacare from going into effect on
schedule in October.
Without those 40 Republicans,
House Speaker John Boehner did not
have enough votes to pass a funding resolution. Reluctantly, and with
behind-the-scene warnings that it ceal: the fiasco of the rollout of healthwouldn’t work, Boehner went along care.gov.
The Obama administration had 42
with the shutdown for nearly two
months between the passage of Obamweeks.
Boehner was right about the inability acare and the Oct. 1 rollout. In the 42
of Republicans to defund Obamacare, months between the attack on Pearl
and victory in Europe,
and he was right about the public re- H a r b o r
the United States desponse. Republiployed a 16 millioncan poll numbers
man military around
plummeted, Presithe world, prodent Obama’s job
duced thousands
approval shot up
of ships, tanks
toward 50 percent,
and airplanes, and
and the generic
ballot — which party’s candidate will advanced in Europe and the Pacific to
you back in House elections? — showed produce the “absolute victory” FDR
a big six percent Democratic advantage. promised over Hitler. In 42 months the
Democrats talked gleefully and Obama administration couldn’t build a
not implausibly about regaining their functioning website.
House majority. Republicans had reaVOTERS NOTICED. By late Noson to fear that they would lose the one
part of the federal government they vember, the big Democratic lead in the
generic vote had disappeared, never to
control.
When Boehner got House Republi- reappear. Republican politicians and
cans to cave on the shutdown; however, primary voters noticed, too. The pool
voters started noticing something else of House hardliners shrank from about
— something the media could not con- 40 to perhaps a dozen. No more govern-
Michael
Barone
DOUBLE STANDARD: November 7, 2014
Punching the Duggar family
W
hile so much of reality television dwells on catty “Real
Housewives” and Snookistyle party-hearty debauchery, it’s interesting to note that a small fraction of
this ever-expanding genre is celebrating
evangelical Christianity and values like
chastity.
This drives the libertines crazy. Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever
recently raged on the Internet against
the Duggar family of TLC’s 19 Kids &
Counting and how they are no more worthy of attention than the Kardashians.
Their children are denied “freedom of
choice.”
the channel!” Let’s face it, the Duggar
family isn’t broken by divorce or addiction or other social maladies. That is why
the critics are turned off.
On the other hand, the celebrity magazines have found these popular Christian
reality shows to be worthy of cover stories. The latest Us Weekly forwards Duck
Dynasty teenager Sadie Robertson’s decision to forego premarital sex. A recent
edition of People magazine re-
“MY THOUGHTS on the Duggars
are few and far between because I think
the show treats its viewers like they’re
learning-disabled,” he wrote. Then he
doubled down. “The viewers, not the
Duggars. Although ...”
Leftists, especially openly gay writers
like Stuever, itch for the children to rebel
against that old-time religion. “I guess we
just sit and wait and hope that there’s a
contrarian in the bunch who gets the itch
to write a tell-all at some point down the
road. I’d be surprised if anyone seriously
watches the Duggar show out of a place
of envy.”
It is the right of a TV critic to knock
the Duggar show as too sweet and happy
and prim for his snarky tastes. But how
do those critics react when you knock a
show they like? “If you don’t like it, turn
ported on newly married Jill Duggar and
the family’s “Extreme Courtship Rules.”
Those principles are a direct challenge to
today’s hookup culture, and that’s what
makes magazine readers so curious about
them.
Brent
Bozell
IT NATURALLY follows that loutish
“sex columnist” Dan Savage would get in
his insults at these “professional virgins.”
The conservative blog site Twitchy took
exception to his wisecracking on Twitter
that the Duggar daughters should observe
his mating rules, including his notion of
“F--- First.” Savage thinks people should
be sexually compatible before marriage,
so chastity is a terrible idea. In fact, he
despises virginity and its advocates. His
rules also include cheating, which is “inevitable” in his mind.
After Twitchy spurred the conservative Twitterati to attack him, Savage then
responded with a 2,500-word attack on
the Duggar worldview. Like Stuever, it
begins with the notion that Christians
are an organized “hate group.” Their oldest son Josh now works for the Family
Research Council, which validates their
charge, they would tell you.
Savage argues that if the Duggars
were Muslims and Josh worked for the
Council on American-Islamic Relations,
conservatives would never embrace
them. “But the right wing doesn’t have
a problem with the Duggars: They’re the
right color, they worship the right God,
and they want to impose the right brand
of theocracy.”
Savage, like Stuever, wishes these
robot-children would grow up to reject
their freakish parents: “I have hopes for
all the unmarried little Duggars still being pimped on television and dragged to
campaign rallies: I hope they all get out
from under the thumbs of their crazy,
controlling, virginity-obsessed parents.”
LEFTISTS BETTER hope their
“best wishes” for rebellion are never
turned on them. Would it seem kind for
conservatives to wish that Dan Savage’s
adopted son should write a “tell-all book”
about growing up having to hear all about
his “father’s” extreme sex rules and obsessions? It would seem unkind, intolerant and smug —all adjectives that apply
to the Duggar bashers.
ment shutdowns, thank you very much.
In primary after primary, Republican
voters did not opt, as they had in 2010
and 2012, for the loudest candidates
standing on chairs yelling, “He--, no!”
Party leaders promoted more palatable
candidates and substituted Cory Gardner for the 2010 loser in the Colorado
Senate race. Such maneuvers would
not have worked if primary voters had
balked.
The result is that Republicans fielded
cheerful, optimistic, unthreatening and
future-minded candidates in crucial
Senate races — and won almost all of
them. Similar things happened in House
and governor contests.
A second, mostly unseen turning
point came in late September 2014. Republicans’ numbers rose sharply in the
Alaska, Ark., Colo., Iowa, La. and N.C.
Senate races during the week of Sept. 22
to 28.
What was in the news then? Obama
announced we would bomb Islamic
State forces but deploy no troops on the
ground. And the Liberian Ebola patient,
Thomas Eric Duncan, was — belatedly
— hospitalized in Dallas.
This despite the assurances of Obama
and the protocols of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. They
rejected proposals to bar entrants from
afflicted African nations or impose
quarantines, which have been standard
public health procedure since the Venetian Republic imposed one in 1377.
Polls showed 70 to 80 percent of Americans supported quarantine.
Americans were told that “science”
justified these decisions. The argument
was that quarantine would deter health
care professionals from volunteering to
work in Africa. But how many people
willing to endure such discomfort and
danger would be deterred by the requirement of 21 days of comfortable
isolation? Liberals accused Americans
of “panic” for being concerned about
the spread of a communicable and often
deadly disease. Their approach reeked
of the liberal refrain common in the
1970s and 1980s: “It’s a complex issue;
you wouldn’t understand.”
Republican candidates nevertheless
called for quarantine. Democrats initially toed the administration line, and then
some switched positions. That’s evidence that the issue — largely ignored
in campaign ads and coverage — was
having an impact.
EBOLA WASN’T the only factor in
the campaign. But perhaps it stopped
Democrats from gaining ground, just
as memories of the shutdown evidently
motivated Republicans to field more
salable candidates. These little-noticed
factors probably contributed to the Republican wave, even though they did not
cause it.
22
JOBS: November 11, 2014
New job figures are less than what they seem
L
Yes, the national unemployment
ast month’s new job figures,
despite the news media’s rate inched down to 5.8 percent, but
exaggerated response, fell that was largely due to long-term unwell below the numbers needed to put employed workers who’ve stopped
looking
for employment beAmerica back to work.
they could not find
Soon after the U.S. Bureau of Labor c a u s e
good, full-time jobs.
Statistics (BLS)
When workers
released its retell BLS surveyport, announcing
takers they’re no
that the Obama
longer
looking
economy created
(c) 2014, United Media Services
for work, they’re
a mere 214,000
jobs in October, the media immedi- erased from the jobless list, and that’s
ately responded with gushing reviews, the chief reason why the jobless rate
calling the figure “sturdy,” “strong” fell.
University of Maryland business
and “robust.”
The Washington Post was absolute- economist Peter Morici says the lower
ly ecstatic, declaring the job numbers unemployment rate “has been mostly
were “the latest reassuring sign about accomplished by encouraging prime
the strength of the economic recov- working-aged adults to sit out the labor market.”
ery.”
“If the same percentage of adults
BUT THE JOB market’s growth were in the labor force today as when
was, by any comparison, as weak as President Obama or George W. Bush
it’s been so many times before over the took office, the jobless rate would be
course of Barack Obama’s presidency. about 9.8 and 11.9 percent, respecWho says so? The voters, in a mas- tively,” Morici writes in an analysis of
sive repudiation of Obama and the October’s figures.
As for the much-ballyhooed
Democrats in last week’s election.
Exit polls across the country showed 214,000 figure, he says “it is still far
that the economy and the lack of stron- short of the 400,000 per month needed
ger job growth were still their top con- to bring unemployment down to acceptable levels.”
cerns.
And if anyone thinks that the 5.8
While the network news played up
the BLS jobs number and the new un- percent jobless rate is a big improveemployment rate, it did not reveal that ment, unemployment levels are actua large proportion of these jobs were ally a lot worse in more than half of
in low-paying service and retail sec- the states.
The government’s 5.8 percent figure
tor employment. Many were part-time
positions or jobs with fewer hours to is an average of all the jobless rates in
avoid falling under the Obamacare in- the 50 states, effectively hiding what
much of the country is still going
surance mandate.
Donald
Lambro
through under Obama’s anti-job, antigrowth policies.
The truth is that 26 states and the
District of Columbia have unemployment rates that range from six percent
to nearly eight percent. And they include states with the biggest populations: N.Y. (6.2), N.J. (6.5), Illinois
(6.6), Mich. (7.2) and Calif. (7.3), to
name a few.
If you need further evidence of how
Americans have soured on the Obama
economy’s jobs picture, take a look at
this.
THE GALLUP POLL released
a global jobs survey this week that
found, in its polling of North America,
that Americans “were decidedly more
negative overall” about their job prospects.
Gallup’s stunning findings: 56 percent of American men and 64 percent
of women said “it was a bad time to
find a job.”
Flat or declining incomes is another
major weakness in the Obama economy, the result of six years of lackluster
growth and weak capital investment
that has reduced new business formation. One in three Americans now describe the economy as “poor,” says a
recent Pew Research Center survey.
Perhaps the most overlooked weakness in the Obama economy in the past
six years has been those Americans
who BLS calls the “underemployed.”
These are Americans who want and
desperately need full-time employment
but can’t find it, and thus are forced to
take a part-time job. There are at present over 27 million Americans in parttime work, compared to 24.8 million
10 years ago. The underemployment
rate for these Americans stands at 11.5
percent.
Economic studies show that the
number of Americans looking for jobs
is significantly higher than available
job openings. And that isn’t likely to
change anytime soon.
Now the president faces a Republican Congress that has been given
a mandate in the midway point of
his second term to turn the economy
around.
When Obama met with House and
Senate leaders from both sides of the
aisle last week, he said he would judge
any ideas about changing policies solely by “whether or not they work.”
When he came into office in 2009,
he said that if a program or policy
wasn’t working, he would try something new.
But he hasn’t done that. Six long
years after he spent $1 trillion to create
“shovel-ready jobs” for a wide range
of federal projects on “infrastructure,”
and to invest in clean energy businesses that instead went bankrupt, he’s still
pushing the same failed ideas, expecting a different result — and has refused
to consider any other policies.
If he searched for what worked in
the past, he could look to the Kennedy,
Reagan and Clinton tax cuts that triggered much stronger job creation and
would do so again now.
But that would violate the Democrats’ liberal blood oath to never encourage capital investment, private
enterprise and free markets that would
quickly put our nation back to work.
THE END result has been six painfully sluggish years of an underperforming economy and an anguished
cry from the voters to change course.
23
November 19, 2014
ISRAEL: November 11, 2014
Obama always puts U.S. on the wrong side
A
mericans of most political olution. Steady American diplomacy
persuasions tend to view the under later presidents got the foul thing
United Nations as corrupt revoked in 1991.
It has been the mark of the Obama
and morally inverted. An organization
supposedly dedicated to the Universal administration to join the jackals. In
when Hamas sympaDeclaration of Human Rights regularly 2 0 1 0 ,
thizers organized a
overlooks abuses
flotilla to run the
by the world’s
Gaza
blockade
worst
actors
and bring weapons
(Cuba, North Koand other supplies
rea, China, just to
to the terrorist
name three) while
organization, the
expending
vast
quantities of outrage at the efforts of Obama administration joined others
one tiny democracy, Israel, to defend at the UN to condemn not Hamas but
Israel. Then-Secretary of State Hillary
itself.
Clinton offered that the Gaza blockade
WHEN THE United States stands (also maintained by Egypt, though that
with Israel against the UN lynch mob, of course went unmentioned) was “unit restores ballast to the moral uni- sustainable and unacceptable.” (Supverse. What should be up is up, and plies such as food and medicine were
what should be down is down. I kept flowing freely from Israel into Gaza.)
The pattern has been repeated time
a photograph of Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. ambassador to the and again, but its persistence doesn’t
UN in the 1970s, on my wall for many dull its capacity to shock. Foreign polyears. Scowling with disgust at the cor- icy is always a delicate dance, and yes,
ruption of the idea of human rights in allies sometimes criticize one another.
the UN, he held his hand high to veto But the Obama administration has conthe infamous “Zionism is Racism” res- sistently found little to criticize in our
Mona
Charen
adversaries and everything to mock
and disdain in our friends.
In just the past several weeks, President Obama has sent another missive
to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of
Iran, apparently suggesting that our
two nations unite against a common
enemy, Isis. Leave aside for now the
strategic folly of this attempt — Iran is
a far more dangerous enemy to the U.S.
and to world peace than Isis — and just
consider the other story emerging from
the Middle East.
ISRAELI CITIZENS have been
victims of a number of terror attacks
in the past six months. A Palestinian
drove a car into a crowd of civilians
MARRIAGE: November 11, 2014
Coolidge in 2016: Personal decisions
A
t a dinner sponsored by the
Calvin Coolidge Memorial
Foundation last Thursday (I
am an unpaid national advisory board
member), there was a debate about
wealth redistribution. A team of Canadian students who think government
should “spread the wealth around”
faced off against a team of American
students who think government has no
business doing any such thing.
The theme continued when former
Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) debated
Chrystia Freeland, a member of Canadian Parliament. While all of this
was informative, civil, interesting and
at times entertaining, the final speaker,
CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow,
may have uttered the most profound
thought of the evening.
WHILE KUDLOW takes the traditional conservative position when
it comes to economics, he said what
would help individuals as well as the
nation the most is for people to “get
married.” He said it loudly, and the
super-sophisticated New Yorkers in the
room fell momentarily silent. When the
shock wore off, many heads began to
nod.
Kudlow’s point was that marriage
gives people a reason to work, a home
one hopes is stable, and children for
whom two parents feel responsible.
Sociologists have reached the same
conclusion over many years. In her
book, One Marriage Under God: The
Campaign To Promote Marriage in
America, sociologist Melanie Heath
writes, “Married people” — for whatever reason — “are happier, healthier
and better off financially.”
Cal
Thomas
(c) 2014, Tribune Media Services
The point I took from the speakers
at the Coolidge dinner was that the real
power to influence a life does not lie
in or emanate from Washington, D.C.,
whichever party is in power. Instead,
it comes from the millions of personal
decisions each person makes for his or
her own life.
HOW MANY politicians today
would dare to admonish people who are
living together to get married? And yet
for not just economic reasons, doesn’t
it seem the wisest course for most to
take when one considers the benefits?
Cohabiters may look at their divorced
parents as an excuse not to marry, but
that is an excuse, not a sufficient reason. One might better consider successful marriages, instead of failed ones,
and emulate what made the good ones
work.
At the Coolidge dinner, the organization’s chairwoman, Amity Shlaes,
passed out buttons that said “Coolidge
in ‘16.” Although the 30th president
died in 1933, his ideas and philosophy
of life are being given new life by events
like these. If his ideas worked — and
Coolidge’s did because they were born
from a Puritan ethic that founded and
sustained America well into the 20th
century, making the 1920s roar economically — why not reconsider those ideas,
updating them as necessary and applying
them to solve today’s problems, rather
than skipping from one failed policy to
another?
Back to marriage. The Coolidges had
an unusual relationship, but it worked
for them. Grace was vivacious and outgoing, her husband quite the opposite.
And yet there was genuine love.
Few men have ever uttered more noble words about their wives than what
Coolidge said of his: “She has borne
with my infirmities and I have rejoiced
in her graces.”
LARRY KUDLOW seemed to be
suggesting — and I would agree with
him — that you don’t get that kind of affirmation outside of a committed marital
relationship, which also makes for stronger families, economies and nations.
in Jerusalem, killing a six-month-old
baby and wounding others. There have
been stabbings and other vehicular homicides. In all, six Israelis have been
killed and more than 100 injured.
The State Department’s response
to two episodes of violence reveals
how perverted the Obama administration’s moral compass is. Tom Wilson
of Commentary notes that in the past
few weeks, two “victims” of violence
in Israel held dual citizenship. The first
was Rabbi Yehuda Glick, an advocate
for the rights of all religions to worship
on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Glick was shot at point-blank range
after a series of incendiary statements
from PA leader Mahmoud Abbas suggesting that the Jews “desecrate” the
Mount by even setting foot there. Glick
has been in a medically induced coma
ever since.
Yet, though Glick holds joint U.S.
and Israeli citizenship, the U.S. government was utterly silent about his attempted murder and has been equally
mum about Abbas’ ugly racial incitement.
Now consider the death of Palestinian-American teen Orwa Abd alWahhab Hammad. The 17-year-old
was shot by Israeli security forces as he
was poised to hurl a Molotov cocktail
off a bridge onto civilian traffic below.
The U.S. State Department, making
much of Hammad’s U.S. citizenship,
demanded “a speedy and transparent
investigation.” Spokesman Jen Psaki
then added that the U.S. “expresses its
deepest condolences to the family of a
U.S. citizen minor who was killed by
the Israeli Defense Forces.”
As for Rabbi Glick, who was threatening no one but merely advocating
for the religious rights of all and was
attacked on that account, the U.S. had
nothing to say. There have been no
calls for Palestinian authorities to investigate this latest string of murders
and other attacks. Glick’s family has
heard nothing privately from the U.S.
government, and of course, there have
been no public declarations of dismay
at the attack upon him.
OBAMA CONTINUES to insult,
snub and humiliate Israel while secretly and increasingly openly courting the
terror regime in Iran. The moral inversion could not be more complete.
24
RACE: November 11, 2014
The New South – black and conservative
I
Southern white Democrats, descenn 1956, 19 Democratic Senators
and 82 Democratic House mem- dants of the men who voted for that
bers signed a Southern Manifes- Southern Manifesto, are an endangered
to pledging to resist the integration of species, a dying breed.
S.C.,
Ga., Ala., Miss., La.
Southern public schools as ordered by
and Ark. will not
Earl Warren’s Susend a single white
preme Court.
Democrat to ConOnly two GOP
gress, if Mary
House members,
Landrieu loses her
both from Vir(c) 2014, Creators Syndicate
run-off. The only
ginia, signed. The
Democrats in the
American South
was as solidly Democratic as it was sol- House from Deep South states will be
African-Americans. Tenn., N.C. and
idly segregationist.
The break in the dam came in a spe- W.Va. are trending the same way.
Republican dominance in the New
cial election in Texas in 1961 to fill the
Senate seat of Lyndon Johnson, newly South is partly explained by the conservatism of the region, which is in tune
elected vice president.
with the national GOP. But the rise of
JOHN TOWER became the first the black Democrat and extinction of
Republican since Reconstruction to win the white Democrat is also traceable to
a Southern Senate seat by popular elec- the Voting Rights Act.
Required by law and the Justice Detion.
After a raucous rally in South Caro- partment to create districts where Afrilina in 1966, Richard Nixon told this can-Americans would be competitive,
writer the future of the GOP was in the Southern legislatures began to draw up
South. That was a year after passage of majority-minority districts where the
the Voting Rights Act and LBJ’s fore- black vote was so concentrated as to
cast that Democrats could lose Dixie for ensure the election of an African-American.
a generation.
The GOP offer on the table for black
Nixon believed that once desegregation was done, its natural conservatism Democrats was safe seats in Congress
would bring the South into the party of they could hold for decades, to build up
Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan. History sufficient seniority to garner real power
to use on behalf of their constituents.
has proven him right.
As Republicans took over legislaIn 1972, President Nixon would
tures, they not only followed the VRA
sweep all 11 Southern states.
As for the Voting Rights Act, while it mandate, they went beyond it. They
led to the enfranchisement and empow- created secure House seats for black
erment of the black South, it has proven candidates, which inevitably resulted in
a death sentence for Boll Weevils and heavily white districts, tailor-made for
conservative Republicans.
Blue Dogs.
Pat
Buchanan
Moderate and liberal Democrats
were squeezed out as African-American
Democrats colluded with conservative
Republicans to carve up Southern states
in a way to ensure the results we see today.
AS HISPANICS, also geographically concentrated, begin to register and
vote in greater numbers, Republicans
will likely use the same strategy to carve
out deeply Hispanic districts for them.
Thus the end result of the Voting
Rights Act is likely to be more districts
represented by blacks, Hispanics and
Asians. These will be largely Democratic and come to represent a plurality of Democrats in the House, as white
Democratic Congressmen shrink in
number.
Moreover, by using naked race-based
ads in the Nov. 4 elections, Democratic
strategists are pushing us to an America
where the GOP is predominantly white
and the Democratic Party, especially in
Dixie, is dominated by persons of color.
As Jeremy Peters of the New York
Times wrote in the paper’s lead story a
week before the elections:
“Democrats in the closest Senate
races in the South are turning to racially
charged messages — invoking Trayvon
Martin, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo.,
and Jim-Crow era segregation. ...
“The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they
play on fears of intimidation and repression.”
The ads worked. But while Dixie
Democrats rolled up landslides among
black voters, Michelle Nunn, daughter
of Sen. Sam Nunn, carried only 27 percent of the white vote in Georgia, and
was wiped out.
Ironically, as Republicans capture
state legislatures across the South, they
will wield their power as energetically
to guarantee black Democrats get safe
districts as the old Dixiecrat Democrats
wielded their power to ensure that black
folks could not vote.
This weekend, two million Catalans went to the polls in Spain and in
a non-binding referendum voted 4-1
to secede. This follows the vote by 45
percent of the Scottish people to secede
from Britain.
As ethnonationalism pulls at the
seams of many countries of Europe, it
would appear it is also present here in
the United States. When political appeals on the basis of race and ethnicity
are being made openly by liberal Democrats, as in 2014, we are on a road that
ends in a racial-ethnic spoils system —
and national disintegration.
“THERE IS NO room in this country for hyphenated Americanism,”
roared Teddy Roosevelt, “a hyphenated
American is not an American at all.”
Typical hate crime by a man unappreciative of our diversity.
25
November 19, 2014
GOP victory was easy, now the hard part
T
he GOP victory Election
Night was the easy part. Now
comes the real work: forging
an agenda that will solidify Republican gains over the next two years. Exit
polls make clear that dissatisfaction
with President Obama drove this election. As the president famously said in
October, “I am not on the ballot this
fall. ... But make no mistake: These
policies are on the ballot. Every single
one of them.”
THE PRESIDENT’S words came
true, but not quite in the way he intended. Come 2016, however, Republicans will have to run on what they’ve
accomplished legislatively and what a
different agenda a Republican would
bring to the White House. But the elec-
torate will be significantly broader than Single women represented two percent
the one that went to the polls on Tues- fewer voters than in 2012. As a result,
whites, especially white males, who overday.
vote Republican, had
Only about 37 percent of eligible vot- whelmingly
impact on the final
ers turned out this election, according to g r e a t e r
results. Republican
early analyses —
candidates received
which redounded
a whopping 64 perto the GOP’s adcent of white male
vantage. Demovotes in 2014.
crats weren’t able
Republicans
to energize their
base. Black turnout was down, resulting can’t count on Democrats’ apathy next
in a two percent decline in their propor- time out. But the results in this year’s retion of the overall vote compared to 2012, turns point to some opportunities for the
a presidential year, and one percent less GOP to expand support among traditionally Democratic groups — provided the
than in 2010, another midterm election.
Hispanic turnout was down, as well. party doesn’t blow it with a legislative
Despite gains in population, Hispanics agenda that rekindles disaffection.
The two groups who are most critical
made up only eight percent of voters in
2014 compared to 10 percent in 2012. to winning the White House and retain-
Linda
Chavez
The elections and the last racists
S
o what did you think of the
2014 election? Do I hear talk
of a wave election? Is 2014 another 2010 election? I think it is, and that
makes it more significant than any other
recent election, as I shall explain in due
course.
First, review the outcome. Republicans have increased their margin in the
House of Representatives. That was
deemed unlikely a couple of days ago.
They have captured the Senate, again a
very questionable outcome according to
the polls only a few days ago. They have
won a majority of governorships, including in one-party Ill., Md. and Mass.
Moreover, they probably have a majority of state legislatures. And one thing
more — the Democrats’ leading campaigners continue, as has been true for
years, to be the kiss of death to almost
anyone they endorse. I am speaking of
my friends, the Clintons.
FINALLY, THERE are two more
races that spring to mind, in S.C. and
Utah. Tim Scott, a black Republican,
won the Senate seat in South Carolina,
and Mia Love, a black woman Republican, won a House seat in Utah. Possibly it is time for the Democrats to desist
from their vulgar practice of pitching
campaigns towards supposed women’s
issues and the inflammatory issue of
race. Those issues have grown tiresome.
Who else besides a Democratic candidate would think that condoms and
race are anything but passe issues today?
Birth control lost its ability to shock us
about 50 years ago, and certainly by this
election it has lost its ability to turn out
large numbers of angry women. As for
playing the race card, it should have lost
its ability to fire up the Democratic base
after the 2008 election, when the American people elected their first black president.
Then, many voters were glad to vote
for Barack Obama, if for no other reason,
to put the issue of racial prejudice behind
us. What other Western power had elected a black man to such an exalted office?
Four years later they voted for this black
man yet again, many suspecting that
they were electing a failing president.
Still they thought they would give him
the governance of the country one more
time, so proud were they to have overcome racial prejudice.
R. Emmett
Tyrrell
LOOKING BACK on Obama’s election and re-election, I have come to the
conclusion that he could not have been
beaten by any living American. In fact,
in a matchup with George Washington
the contest would have been too close to
call. The 2008 election was significant
but not as significant as 2010 and 2014.
With these wave elections the electoral
map, both in the states and nationally,
has changed and will remain changed for
years to come.
The only Americans who talk about
race as a controversial issue today are
Democrats and so-called educators,
about whom there is nothing to be done.
They are hopeless. Attorney General Eric
Holder sent federal monitors to oversee
elections in 18 states, some not even
members of the old Confederacy. He said,
“One of the Justice Department’s most
ing control of Congress are women and
Hispanics. If the GOP alienates these
groups, their path to victory will be virtually nonexistent.
REPUBLICANS DID better among
women overall this time than in 2012,
but not quite as well as they did in 2010,
when dissatisfaction with Obamacare
drove a GOP takeover of the House. In
2010, GOP candidates overall won 51
percent of the female vote, which slipped
to 47 percent in 2014. Congressional Republicans will have to keep women in the
fold in 2016, which will depend on looking like leaders not obstructionists.
Among Hispanics, too, the GOP did
much better than in 2012, winning more
than a third of Hispanic votes nationwide,
compared to only 27 percent in 2012.
The key may well be that, for the most
part, Republican candidates didn’t shoot
themselves in the foot with nasty rhetoric
as Republican presidential hopefuls did
in 2012. Mitt Romney’s invitation for illegal immigrants to self-deport turned off
many Hispanic voters, who viewed the
proposal as not only unrealistic, but also
cruel, dividing families and devastating
immigrant communities.
In Colorado, for example, U.S. Sen.elect Cory Gardner largely stayed away
from illegal immigrant bashing, and it
paid off. Exit poll data analyzed by the
Wall Street Journal showed Republicans
doing much better than they did in the
2010 midterms in counties where Hispanic voters make up more than 20 percent of the vote. Gardner did better in 20
of the 21 heavily Hispanic counties than
the 2010 GOP Senate candidate did.
A critical test for Republicans may
come before they assume actual leadership of the Senate in January. The
president has promised executive action
before the end of the year to give legal
status to as many as half of the 11 million illegal immigrants present in the
U.S. now. Doing so will infuriate many
in the GOP and could prove a Pyrrhic
victory even for illegal immigrants. If the
president acts unilaterally, he will invite
a legal challenge to his authority and virtually guarantee that the new GOP Congress will try to cut off funds for implementation of his executive order when
they return in January.
sacred responsibilities is ensuring access
to the ballot box for every eligible voter,”
whether or not they can prove their identity. Meanwhile Democrats were running
ads on black radio stations accusing Republicans of supporting the kind of gun
laws that “caused the shooting death of
Trayvon Martin.” The Democratic Party
of Georgia was distributing brochures
portraying black children carrying signs
that say “Don’t Shoot” and the handouts
calling on voters to “prevent another Ferguson.” To which the head of the Party,
Barack Obama, made no objection.
As I say, who else in America makes
such inflammatory charges? Well, as it
happens, I was at Indiana University a
week ago giving a speech in the course
of which I mentioned President Obama’s
historic election. And behold, rising
up before me from the audience was a
man who totally ignored my comments
on Obama’s election and repeated the
charge that America is a racist society,
throwing in some claptrap about how
the country also hates its poor. It might
be illuminating to observe that this dunderhead was Indiana University’s student
body president lo some four decades ago
and a revered member of that futile group
the Students for a Democratic Society.
BUT REPUBLICANS would be
He had not stopped harping on racism
and poverty in all these years. Today the smart not to overreact. They should,
president of the United States would not instead, move their own immigration
bills forward, expanding the number of
disagree with our friend from SDS.
legal immigrants admitted and creatLAST WEEK Ben Stein was right ing a temporary worker program that
when he said on Fox News that President could accommodate some of those unObama “is the most racist president there documented workers already doing jobs
has ever been,” at least since the arrival Americans won’t take. How they handle
of the 20th century. It is time for race to this tough situation could open an easier
be abjured by the president and by the path to the White House in 2016 — or
Democratic candidates. America has derail the stunning victory they achieved
this week.
moved on.
26
Carney to GOP: Your party is racist, and ‘you know it’
F
ormer Obama White House
Press Secretary Jay Carney,
now a political commentator
for CNN, casually admitted that, yes,
his party uses race to convince minorities that Republicans seek to oppress
them.
Before the midterm election, Carney
said: “Republicans are going to pick up
seats in the Senate and the House, and
they may win control of the Senate. So
(Democrats) need to mobilize their base
voters, and that is especially true of minority voters.”
CARNEY ALSO admitted that the
use of the race card is cynical: “Equating support for stand-your-ground law
... doesn’t mean you supported the action that took Trayvon Martin’s life. So
that’s the kind of, you know, rough ad
— similar to the one we saw from the
Republican. I think we’ve come to expect that, and hopefully a lot of voters
... kind of tune it out.”
Carney claims both sides use race
to gin up their base. But when Republicans do it, he insists, they do so out
of racism. Consider this exchange with
Bill Kristol, the conservative publisher
of the Weekly Standard. Carney claims
that the Republicans’ push for voter ID
is motivated by the racist Republican
desire to suppress the black vote:
Kristol: I voted in Virginia last Saturday. Since I was going to be in New
York next week, I voted early absentee
in person, and I had to show my driver’s license. Do you think that’s really
a problem?
Carney: You know what the statistics
say. You know who is most affected by
the requirements, essentially poll taxtype requirements.
Kristol: Poll tax? Showing an identification is like charging people a fine,
a tax?
Carney: Bill, you know that the fraud
isn’t substantial and real. You know it
doesn’t have a significant impact, because it’s so minimal, on election results and you know what the motivation
is behind it. You know it.
Kristol: I just totally disagree. But
that’s OK.
Carney: No, you don’t.
So here we have two white guys —
three counting host Jake Tapper — discussing black-white relations. White
Democrat accuses white Republican
of being racist against blacks. White
Republican denies it. White Democrat
says: Oh, yes, you are, and you can
deny it all you want. But you are a bigot
unless and until I say otherwise. White
Republican meekly denies the charge.
The subject is changed. Let’s move on.
Conservative commentator Ben
Stein recently called out Obama and the
Democrats on their vulgar use of the
race card: “What the White House is
doing is trying to racialize all politics, covery is the nation’s worst in 80 years,
and they’re especially trying to tell the arguably ever. Dems cannot talk about
African-American voter that the GOP declining black poverty because the rate
where it was when
is against letting them have a chance at is about
Obama took office.
a good life in this
Black
Inner-city
economy.
And
teenage unemploythat’s just a comment exceeds 50
plete lie. ... The
percent in some
President is the
cities.
most racist presiA
black
dent there has ever
been in America. He is purposely try- 82-year-old grandmother, a lifelong
ing to use race to divide Americans.” Democrat, recently called C-SPAN
Memo to RNC Chair Reince Priebus: to explain why this time she “voted
Stein has just shown how to counter the straight Republican:” “I have noticed
... what the Democratic Party has done
race card — with facts.
to my people. Unemployment is high in
HOW PATHETIC is Obama’s use the black community — we are double
of it? When running for president in with unemployment — than it is any2008 — and to prove he wasn’t at all where else. ... And I’m not talking about
like the Reverend Al Sharpton, Obama the people that need help — because
refused to even appear with the race- with so many people getting help that
hustling flamethrower. Today, they are doesn’t need help, it prevents the people
that really need help from getting it. ...
BFF’s.
Six years in, the Obama administra- I hear my people calling in all the time
tion cannot brag about growth. This re- saying that every time you say some-
Larry
Elder
thing against the ideology of President
Obama, that you’re doing it because he
is black. We need to stop that foolishness. This man is destroying this country, and it’s what he intended to do. He
said he was going to transform America,
and that’s what he’s doing.”
More alarming for Democrats, it’s
not just 82-year-old black grannies who
are reconsidering their allegiance to the
Party. Young black people, the “hope
and change” voters who turned out in
record numbers for Obama, have also
been mugged by the reality of uncommonly high unemployment and underemployment. They see that government,
even when led by a young, progressive, empathetic black President, will
not solve their problems. Among black
18- to 29-year-olds, nearly one-third of
them now self-describe as political “independents.”
AFTER TUESDAY’S election,
Democrats better order some new race
cards. The deck is getting thin.
BLACK EDUCATION: November 12, 2014
Educational fraud, academic failure
I
t would be unreasonable to expect
a student with the reading, writing and computing abilities of an
eighth-grader to do well in college. If
such a student were admitted, his retention would require that the college create
dumbed-downed or phantom courses.
The University of North Carolina made
this accommodation; many athletes were
enrolled in phantom courses in the department of African and African-American studies. The discovery and resulting
scandal are simply the tip of the iceberg
and a symptom of a much larger problem.
scholar-athlete charade, they earn tens
of millions of dollars in sports revenue.
Other than as a pretense, academics can
be ignored. The university just has to
create academic slums, where weak students can “succeed.” Stronger academic
departments benefit because they do not
have to compromise their standards and
bear the burden of having to
deal with weak students. Then
A UNC learning specialist hired to
help athletes found that during the years
2004 to 2012, 60 percent of 183 members of the football and basketball teams
read between fourth- and eighth-grade
levels. Eight to 10 percent read below a
third-grade level. These were black highschool graduates, and their high-school
diplomas were clearly fraudulent. How
cruel is it for UNC to admit students who
have little chance of academically competing on the same basis as its other students? Black students so ill-equipped run
the risk of ridicule and reinforcing white
stereotypes of black mental incompetence. If these students are to retain their
athletic eligibility or minimum GPA requirements, universities must engage in
academic fraud.
Academic fraud benefits the entire
university community except the black
students. If universities can maintain the
there’s that feather in the diversity hat
upon which university administrators are
fixated. I guarantee you that academic
fraud is by no means unique to UNC. As
such, it represents gross dereliction and
dishonesty on the parts of university administrators and faculty members.
Walter
Williams
UNFORTUNATELY, AND to the
detriment of black people, there is broad
support among black members of the
academic community for practices that
lead to academic fraud. In the wake of the
UNC scandal, the Carolina Black Caucus
— a campus group of administrators,
staff and faculty — rushed to the defense
of the black athletes and the department
of African and African-American studies, claiming an unfair investigation and
unfair public and media attack. One campus student group said that the studentathlete fraud scandal is actually a result
of “white supremacist, heteropatriarchal
capitalism.”
Focusing solely on the academic problems of blacks at the college level misses
the point. It is virtually impossible to repair 12 years of rotten primary and secondary education in the space of four or
five years of college. Proof of that is black
student performance on postgraduate
tests, such as the GRE, LSAT and MCAT.
The black-white achievement gap on
those tests is just as wide as it is on the
SAT or ACT, which high schoolers take.
That’s evidence that primary and secondary education deficiencies have not been
repaired during undergraduate years.
The academic achievement level for
white students is nothing to write home
about. Only 25 percent of white highschool graduates taking the 2011 ACT
met its benchmarks for college readiness
in all subjects for which it tests. Only four
percent of black students were collegeready in all subjects, according to their
scores on the ACT.
THE HIGH academic failure rate
among blacks means one of two things.
Either black students cannot learn or primary and secondary schools, parental
choices, black student attitudes, and cultural values regarding education are not
conducive to what young blacks need for
academic excellence. Colleges admitting
underperforming black students conceal,
foster and perpetuate the educational
damages done to these youngsters in their
earlier education.
27
November 19, 2014
VETERANS DAY: November 11, 2014
My Veterans Day test along with our thanks
W
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenith Veterans Day being
Nov. 11, patriots every- hower signed legislation that changed
where feel a sense of pride Armistice Day to Veterans Day to honor
who served in all
as we again honor all who have served t h o s e
American wars.
our country. But
It’s
interestcan you pass my
ing to note that
Veterans Day test?
in 1968, Congress
Do you know
changed Veterans
these facts about
Day to the fourth
Veterans Day?
Monday in October so that federal emACCORDING TO the latest U.S. ployees would have another three-day
weekend. But in 1975, President Gerald
Census Bureau statistics:
— There are 19.6 million veterans in Ford changed the date back to Nov. 11,
effective in 1978, because of its initial
the U.S.
— There are 9.3 million U.S. veter- importance.
Veterans Day is commonly confused
ans who are older than 65.
— There are 1.6 million younger with Memorial Day. That is why it is
important for citizens to realize Veterthan 35.
— There are 1.6 million female vet- ans Day falls on Nov. 11 and honors living service members, whereas Memoerans.
— There are 39,890 veterans still rial Day is commemorated on the fourth
alive who served during World War II, Monday in May and honors those who
have died in service of our country or
the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
— There are 3.6 million veterans from resulting injuries thereof.
As far as caring for living veterans
with a service-connected disability ratgoes, History’s website highlights a few
ing.
Veterans Day originated as Armistice noteworthy facts: “The VA health care
Day on Nov. 11, 1919, the anniversary system had 54 hospitals in 1930, since
of the end of the Great War, now known then it has expanded to include 171
as World War I. (An armistice is an medical centers; more than 350 outpaagreement by opposing forces to stop tient, community, and outreach clinics;
126 nursing home care units; and 35
fighting.)
In 1926, Congress passed a resolu- live-in care facilities for injured or distion to make Nov. 11 an annual obser- abled vets.”
A 1946 Gallup poll revealed that
vance.
In 1938, Nov. 11 became a national most veterans — 75 percent from World
War I and 69 percent from World War
holiday.
Chuck
Norris
four years in the Air Force in South Korea, and my brother Aaron served in the
Army in the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
My other brother, Wieland, was killed in
action in Vietnam when he walked point
alone and drew out enemy fire so that
others in his platoon could fight their
way out to freedom. Many souls were
saved on that day because of my brother’s bravery. (My mom wrote a chapter
on each of us and our military service —
and for the first time tells Wieland’s war
story at length — in her autobiography,
MY FATHER fought in World War Acts of Kindness: My Story, available at
II at the Battle of the Bulge. I served for http://www.chucknorris.com.)
Honoring vets on Veterans Day is
about not knowledge but homage. It is
not about looking at your neighbor’s
Stars and Stripes but about posting Old
Glory with pride on your own home. It
is not about merely saluting from afar
those who have served but about shaking the hands of those who have valiantly sacrificed their time and lives for our
republic.
I agree with these words by President John F. Kennedy: “As we express
our gratitude, we must never forget that
the highest appreciation is not to utter
words, but to live by them.”
You want to pass my Veterans Day
test? Then educate others about veterans and, as often as they are before you,
shake the hands of those who are serving or have served our country as you
say, “Thanks for your service.”
II — believed that the U.S. government
had given them sufficient help. What’s
interesting is that uninjured combat vets
from World War I were given “little
more than a $60 allowance and a train
ticket home,” according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. With the GI
Bill becoming law in 1944, however,
additional benefits for vets included
education, job training, unemployment
compensation and guaranteed home and
business loans.
ON BEHALF of millions of Americans, my wife, Gena, and I salute all
who serve and have served our great
country and the cause of freedom. And
we pray daily for those who continue
to put themselves in harm’s way and
humbly bow our heads in thanks for our
fallen heroes who have given their lives
so that we might live ours.
28
ISRAEL: November 12, 2014
God’s greatest miracle: Reborn Israel
W
— “I am the Lord thy God, which
hat’s the most striking difference between Israel to- brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
day and the Israel I first from the house of bondage.” — Deuterexperienced as a foreign correspondent onomy 5:6
Who is God? He is the one who led
more than 30 years ago?
Israel is smaller today than it was the children of Israel out of Egypt. That’s
how he
defined himself from
then, but it has many more people.
the time of Moses and
Though the Jewthe Exodus. Howevish state has been
er, a prophecy in the
accused by its enbook of Jeremiah
emies of imperial(23:7-8) suggests
ism and colonial(c) 2014, Creators Syndicate
God would come to
ism, nothing could
be further from the truth. Over the past be known in the latter days by an even
30 years, Israel has made one land con- greater miracle than the Exodus.
cession to its enemies after another.
WHAT WOULD that be?
Thus, the country is smaller.
“Therefore, behold, the days come,
BUT PEOPLE keep flocking to Is- saith the Lord, that they shall no more say,
rael — mostly Jews, but not just Jews. The Lord liveth, which brought up the
Israel’s fate is not, therefore, in the
As anti-Semitism sweeps Europe and children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;
begins to rear its hideously ugly head in But, The Lord liveth, which brought up hands of its enemies. Israel’s fate is not
the U.S., Jews continue their new exodus and which led the seed of the house of in the hands of the “international comIsrael out of the north country, and from munity.” Israel’s fate is not in the hands
— a greater exodus.
What do I mean by a “greater exo- all countries whither I had driven them; of Barack Obama. Israel’s fate is in the
hands of God.
and they shall dwell in their own land.”
dus?”
Israel was scattered and regathered
It is to be the regathering of the chilWhat we have seen beginning in the
latter part of the 20th century and con- dren of Israel — a miracle that took place more than once. But it will not be scattinuing into the 21st is indeed evidence in the 20th century and that is still hap- tered again. In God’s economy, it repreof God’s greatest miracle in modern pening today — that will overshadow sents the center of the world — the apple
of his eye. Because of its disobedience,
even the miracle of the Exodus.
times — the regathering of Israel.
In fact, God himself predicted the
miracle of this return of the Jews from all
FREE SPEECH: November 11, 2014
over the earth and proclaimed it a bigger
miracle than the parting of the Red Sea.
What do I mean?
Throughout the Tanach (what Christians refer to as the Old Testament), God
frequently describes himself as the one
“I may be a thief, but you’re a ter- want? Short, who is a lawyer with the
who led the children of Israel out of rorist,” quoth University of California, Life Legal Defense Foundation, would
Egypt. The Exodus story represents one Santa Barbara feminist studies profes- not say. But she did tell me the suit is
of God’s greatest miracles — so great sor Mireille Miller-Young. It was March more about the university than it is
that he adopts it as his own personal 4. The professor had just grabbed an about one professor.
identifier.
As far as Short knows, UCSB did
anti-abortion poster from the Survivors
Here is just a sampling of those key of the Abortion Holocaust at the campus not punish Miller-Young. The lawsuit
verses:
free speech area. The professor didn’t contends that the university never con— “I am the Lord thy God, which have like a poster of an aborted fetus; I don’t tacted the plaintiffs, which would sugbrought thee out of the land of Egypt, out blame her. But she had no right to take gest there was no investigaof the house of bondage.” — Exodus 20:2 the poster.
— “And they shall know that I am the
Lord their God, that brought them forth
THRIN SHORT, 16, and her sister
out of the land of Egypt, that I may dwell Joan, 21, pursued the professor and her
among them: I am the Lord their God.” student entourage. They also recorded
— Exodus 29:46
what ensued. Miller-Young got physi— “For I am the Lord that bringeth cal. The Shorts called the police. In
you up out of the land of Egypt, to be August, Miller-Young apologized and tion. Nor did the university apologize.
your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I pleaded no contest to theft and battery Michael D. Young, vice chancellor for
am holy.” — Leviticus 11:45
charges. A judge sentenced her to three student affairs, sent an email to students
— “I am the Lord your God, which years of probation, 108 hours of com- in March to remind them, “The price we
brought you out of the land of Egypt.” — munity service and 10 hours of anger pay to speak our own minds is allowLeviticus 19:36
ing others to speak theirs, regardless of
management counseling.
— “Neither shall ye profane my holy
What has the university done about how oppositional their views are to our
name; but I will be hallowed among the this professor’s illegal and outrageous own.” Young also wrote that UCSB was
children of Israel: I am the Lord which attempt to silence dissent? Was there being tested by “outsiders coming into
hallow you, That brought you out of the even an investigation? “It’s a personnel our midst to provoke us, to taunt us and
land of Egypt, to be your God: I am the matter that we’re handling internally,” attempt to turn us against one another.”
Lord.” — Leviticus 22:32-33
spokesman George Foulsham answered.
— “I am the Lord your God, which
THAT IS, the university would not
Katie Short, mother of Joan and
brought you out of the land of Egypt, to Thrin and now their attorney, filed a comment on the professor after she was
be your God: I am the Lord your God.” lawsuit against UC and the professor found guilty, but early on it did offer up
— Numbers 15:41
last week. How much do the plaintiffs an opinion on Miller-Young’s victims.
Joseph
Farah
its lack of trust and faith in him, it will experience extremely difficult tribulations.
But it will not vanish. It will not perish. It
will not be dispersed again.
THAT’S A promise, not from me but
from God — the God who led the children of Israel out of Egypt and who regathered them from all over the world so
they could dwell in their own land.
UC silent when prof trashes free speech
Debra J.
Saunders
Short tells me she wants the university “to take some responsibility” for
what happened. The university should
send a clear message that the professor’s behavior was not only illegal but
also anti-intellectual. George Washington University law professor Jonathan
Turley blogged that it was disturbing to
watch Miller-Young “encouraging her
students to silence opposing views by
stealing a sign. It is the very antithesis
of the academic mission which is based
first and foremost on free speech and association — and civility.”
LAST MONTH, UC Berkeley students disinvited comedian Bill Maher
from a commencement speech after a
rump student group launched a petition
that asked the administration to “protect” students from Maher’s speech.
(The administration intervened, and
the invitation stands.) A UCSB petition
called on the university to re-evaluate
“rules and regulations that allow outside
community members to so heavily trigger and target students and faculty” on
campus. In the moment of truth, Miller-Young equated a provocative poster
with terrorism. What the petitioners and
the professor apparently believe is that
when challenged, they cannot defend
their own ideas.
29
November 19, 2014
FREEDOM: November 6, 2014
More culture wars? Two great freedoms at issue
B
ecause of the way the news
business works, I am writing
this column before the close
of the polls in the so-called midterm
elections, and hence as I write, I do not
know their outcome. Will the Republicans or the Democrats control the U.S.
Senate for the next two years? Will it
make a difference?
The two major political parties are
more alike than they are different. On
the two paramount issues of our day —
war and debt — they are identical. With
the exception of Democratic progressives and Republican libertarians, the
two parties stand for perpetual war and
perpetual debt. Both stances increase
the power of the government, and each
invites present and future destruction.
A HEALTHY society should avoid
war at all costs, except when immediately vital for its own self-defense. A
healthy government should pay its bills
and not push them off to the next generation. Do you know any American
I say “claim” because that’s all Rewhose freedom and safety have been
enhanced or fortified because of all our publicans need to do to satisfy each othempire building in the Middle East? Do er. If Republicans truly were pro-life,
you know that the federal government they’d have passed a one-paragraph
when they ran the
borrowed two trillion dollars to wage s t a t u t e
Congress and George
these wars and now
W. Bush was in the
spends
twenty
White House that
cents of every dollegally defined a felar in interest on
tus in the womb as
its debt? Do you
a natural person.
know that the conOf course, morally
gressional leadership and most of the rank and file of and biologically, a fetus is a natural perboth political parties have brought this son. The fetus has human parents and
possesses a fully actualizable human
about?
There are two great freedoms being genome — all the genetic materials
assaulted under the radar that will soon needed to grow and flourish and possess
come to the fore: the freedom to live self-directed humanity. But no such legand the freedom to speak. Both parties islation ever came.
use abortion as a litmus test. You want
SINCE THE Supreme Court dethe Democratic nomination for any federal or state office; you need to support nied personhood to every fetus in 1973,
a woman’s right to abortion. You want much as it had done to African-Amerithe Republican nomination for any fed- cans in 1857, more than 44,000,000 baeral or state office; you better claim that bies have met the abortionists’ vacuum
and scalpel. Will a newly revived Reyou are pro-life.
Andrew
Napolitano
IRAN: November 6, 2014
Like bargaining with the devil
H
aving missed a July deadline
for reaching an agreement
with Iran over its nuclear program, the six world powers party to the
talks — the United States, Russia, China,
France, United Kingdom and Germany
— have set November 24 as their new
deadline. Iran says there will be no extension if a deal isn’t reached.
Given the Obama administration’s
horrible record in the Middle East —
treating Israel as an enemy and Islamic
dictatorships as potential friends —
things don’t look good for an agreement
that will curtail or reverse Iran’s pursuit
of a nuclear weapon.
AN INDICATION of what the
Obama administration hopes to achieve
in these talks came from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. In
remarks to a liberal group last January
obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Rhodes said: “Bottom line is, this is
the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve
the Iranian issue diplomatically, certainly
since President Obama came to office,
and probably since the beginning of the
Iraq war. ... This is probably the biggest
thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy. This is health
care for us, just to put it in context.”
Burnishing a president’s legacy is not
a sufficient reason to trade away American and Israeli security. That would leave
a legacy of the type Neville Chamberlain
left at Munich in 1938 after the “peace”
he negotiated with Adolf Hitler.
Because of our secular diplomats’ refusal to believe the religious motivations
of Iran’s leaders, the United States has
placed itself at a disadvantage.
The latest, but by no means the only
example of this denial, is found in the
current issue of the Economist. In a special report titled “The Revolution
is Over,” the article says, “Iran
Cal
Thomas
has changed” and its “revolutionary fire
has been extinguished.” In addition, “the
traditional religious society that the mullahs dreamt of has receded” and “pragmatic centrists” are on the rise. Editor-inChief John Micklehwait, writing about
the stalled Iran nuclear talks, adds, “...we
believe the prospects of a deal — if not
now, eventually — are improving.”
Come again?
THIS IS PART of the wishful thinking that will allow Iran to produce and
possibly use a nuclear weapon against
Israel and threaten Europe and the United States.
The problem with the West’s attitude
toward Iran is that it refuses to take seriously the messianic statements driving Iran’s foreign policy. One question
Westerners cannot answer is this: Why
would people who believe they have a
direct command from their god to eradi-
cate Israel and take down the West disobey that god and negotiate an agreement with “infidels” and especially a
country they label “The Great Satan?”
Did their god change his mind?
Some Muslim clerics claim the Koran
gives them the right to lie to “infidels”
in pursuit of their goals, so how do we
know they are not lying when they claim
their nuclear objectives are peaceful?
If Iran’s intentions are truly peaceful,
what’s to negotiate?
TIME magazine has assembled some
of the more incendiary comments by
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
TIME writes, “He calls America ‘the
devil incarnate’ with plans for ‘evil domination of Iran.’ Negotiating with the
United States, he said in 2009, would be
‘naive and perverted.’ He warns that the
west is plotting to ‘arouse sexual desires’
in Islamic Iran, because ‘if they spread
unrestrained mixing of men and women
... there will no longer be any need for
artillery and guns.’”
Last month, according to the Washington Free Beacon, “At least two former Iranian nuclear negotiators joined
with Holocaust deniers, 9/11 truthers
and anti-Semites from across the globe
... in Tehran for Iran’s second annual
New Horizons conference, an antiAmerican hate fest that U.S. lawmakers
say highlights the country’s dangerous
duplicity.”
publican Congress address personhood
to the abortionist in chief in the White
House? Don’t hold your breath.
After the right to life, the next great
freedom under siege is the freedom of
speech. Here, too, both parties in Congress have failed us. When Congress
in 2001 enacted the Patriot Act, which
permits federal agents to write their
own search warrants in utter defiance
and direct contradiction of the Fourth
Amendment, which commands that
only judges may do so, it also prohibited the recipients of agent-written search
warrants from talking about them. At
least a half-dozen federal judges have
found this infringement of speech unconstitutional, yet federal agents who
serve their own search warrants continue to threaten the recipients against
talking to anyone about them. This,
too, came about with the support of the
leadership of both political parties in
Congress.
Not content with commanding silence about search warrants, the Democrats in the Senate attempted to offer
an amendment to the Constitution last
summer, which, if ratified, would have
weakened the First Amendment by permitting Congress and the states to punish the political speech of groups. Three
years ago, the Supreme Court, in a case
called Citizens United, held that free
political speech is such a highly valued
and constitutionally protected asset in
American society that it may be enjoyed not only by individuals, but also
by groups of two or more persons, such
as labor unions, foundations, nonprofits, think tanks, partnerships and corporations.
Outraged that corporations can spend
money to affect the outcome of campaigns, rejecting the concept that buying an advertisement in a newspaper or
on TV is speech, and wanting to remove
the word “free” from free speech, the
Democrats attempted to circulate to the
states an amendment to the Constitution that would have made the government the arbiter of acceptable political
speech. Is Vladimir Putin consulting
the Democrats?
Yet, did you hear any Republicans in
the recent elections call out any Democrats for this stunt? The First Amendment has remained pristine since it was
ratified in 1791, and the Democrats
want to change that, and the Republicans have gone mute.
A LAME DUCK President Obama
facing a Congress he hates and fears
may become reckless. We should expect that. But if somehow he facilitates
the killing of more babies in their mothers’ wombs or the suppression of more
political speech from his critics, what
TELL ME, how do you negotiate will a Republican Congress do? What
with that?
is its track record?
30
GOD’S GRACE: November 7, 2014
Nothing but Him: Resting in God’s grace
T
Hitch has as its main character, Hitch, a honestly responds, “Nothing. Absolutely
clever matchmaker who helps wealthy nothing.”
I’m aware that some ministries proyoung men find romance with the women
of their dreams. The film’s plot empha- mote methodologies they almost guarproduce results, but
sizes a hard case: A Mr. Wide wants to antee will
I’m skeptical: No
woo a beautiful acone can corral the
tress. Hitch gives
Holy Spirit. I’ve
the fat guy a morspent hours with
sel of general enindividuals withcouragement that
(c) 2014, God’s World Publications
out result, yet one
helps him summon
up enough courage to make an initial im- person who credits me with helping him
pression on the actress. Then, things take come to Christ started on the path after a
brief discussion in which we didn’t even
off. Surprisingly, the fat guy and the beau- talk about God. What had I done? “Nothtiful actress find they have common ing. Absolutely nothing.” God did it all. This is not an argument for quiescence
tastes and common insecurities. The romance develops without Hitch’s involve- just because hard work guarantees nothment, until the actress learns that the fat ing in salvation. I am suggesting that we
AS I’VE interviewed over the past guy had hired him. Thinking she has been think we’re in control but we never are.
decade prominent Christians with grown manipulated, she yells at Hitch: “What Should that make us pessimistic? Nope:
children, I’ve often asked (privately) did you do?” He thinks for a moment and God’s in charge, and God’s in the busiwhether their children are following
Christ. Repeatedly, the answers have
BERLIN WALL: November 5, 2014
been: One is, one is not; or two are, one
is not; or two are, three are not — and so
on. When I ask if they can cite anything in
their family or church environment that
would explain the difference, they cannot. Which is why I stress joy and relief.
unday, Nov. 9, marks the 25th
The history of international evangeanniversary of the day the Ber- Those were the emotions that flooded
lism is similar, writ large. Why did Chrislin Wall cracked and Commu- me on Nov. 9, 1989, as I saw video of
tianity spread in Korea and not in Japan? nist East Germany and its Kremlin over- East and West Berliners clasping hands
Why a Chinese fizzling in one century seers silently acknowledged Cold War and weeping. Where were the border
and a wildfire in another? Yes, we can defeat.
guards? Berliners said the East German
note social and geopolitical factors, inUnified Germany will be commemo- border police had disappeared — they
cluding the growth of Christian belief in rating the day the Wall fell. As East and had refused to shoot. Then the crowd
opposition to state-imposed Marxism, but West Berliners began tearing it to pieces, surged. Within a couple of hours, guiall that is speculation. The most famous they began the dicey process of post- tars replaced Kalashnikovs. I recall TV
19th-century missionary in Africa, David World War II German reunification.
footage (the reporter said he was live
Livingstone, was directly involved in the
in East Berlin) of a gleeful young man
conversion of ... one man. Go figure.
TWENTY-FIRST century Germans whacking the Wall with a sledgehamGod’s in charge, and God’s in the busi- believe that process is complete. Or mer.
ness of mysteriously changing lives. That at least they did. Current events may
gives us hope around the Thanksgiving temper celebrations in Germany and
table.
throughout what was Communist-conOn the last evening of a three-week trolled Eastern Europe. On that same
trip this summer through seven Balkan day in 1989 the dangerous and now decountries, a Romanian friend asked me to monstrably incomplete process of USSR
speak to a group of Bucharest intellectu- dissolution commenced. The Kremlin’s
als about what I had observed. I tried to current czar, Russian president Vladimir
beg off, saying any observations I might Putin, regards the Soviet Union’s dissoIN THE MID-1970S I served for
offer would be superficial, but he said I lution as a historical tragedy. Many East- almost three years in Germany as a
could be helpful in suggesting reasons for ern Europeans see Putin’s March 2014 U.S. Army lieutenant. A year of that
optimism.
annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean penin- time was spent in an armored cavalry
That made my assignment particularly sula as a signal that the Kremlin intends unit assigned to patrol what diplomats
difficult, because during the three weeks to regain military control of Ukraine and politely called “the intra-German borI repeatedly heard pessimistic apprais- the Baltic States.
der.” East German guard towers on pilals. Atheism has spread as young people
NATO nations whose troops for some lars, wire fences and mine fields split
see church hierarchs in cahoots with four decades defended Western Europe the Thuringian Forest in our sector.
oligarchs. Many bright young people from Communist Russian attack will These obstacles were the Wall extendemigrate or hope to emigrate. Looking at also commemorate the Wall’s demise, ed. Now a German smashes the Wall
political, social, and economic trends, it as a moment of joy and immense relief with a sledgehammer? Something has
seems hard to be optimistic. But even if more than victory.
changed, for the better.
things were going well, Balkans residents
Note I refer to the damned thing as
The Wall’s fall mattered for everyone
would still depend on God’s mysterious who understood the Cold War’s stakes the Wall. If you pulled a European tour
grace. and risks. The stakes were freedom of duty in the U.S. military, the “Berversus tyranny. The Cold War risks in lin” usually disappeared. Soldiers knew
THE SECULAR equivalent of that Western Europe were manifold, but they what you meant, even if they had never
mystery is the basis of many romantic included escalation from a conventional served in the U.S. Army’s Berlin Bricomedies. For example, the good movie firefight to global thermonuclear war.
gade or taken the train to West Berlin.
he Thanksgiving we’ll celebrate later this month is a day
for reunion but also disunion
whenever Christians and non-Christians
within a family gather around a big table.
Especially if they live far apart, parents
(or children) of unbelievers may feel
they have to seize the time to press home
evangelistic points. I’m not against asking loved ones
where they think they’ll be if a car runs
a red light and sideswipes them on the
way home. It’s a crucial question, but we
shouldn’t feel obligated to push and push
as if the salvation of another rests on our
shoulders. We should love those around
the table and pray fervently for the Holy
Spirit to work miracles.
Marvin
Olasky
ness of mysteriously changing lives. That
gives us hope around the Thanksgiving
table. BY THE WAY, David Livingstone’s
brother-in-law, John Smith Moffat, also
became a missionary unable to count
many conversions. But an orphanage/
school/work training program I visited
several years ago in Zambia, Village of
Hope, has changed the lives of hundreds.
It had its start when three elderly Christian sisters, the grandchildren of an evangelist converted through Moffat’s ministry, provided the land on which Village of
Hope sits.
Go figure.
Reprinted with permission of WORLD.
To read more news and views from a
Christian perspective, call 800-951-6397
or visit WNG.org.
The fall of the Berlin Wall
S
Austin
Bay
So did Germans — at least the West
Germans I ran into.
Many West Germans were once East
Germans. A German friend’s mother
had left East Germany before it was
East Germany. She had fled what was
the Soviet Union’s Zone of Occupation for the French, British or American
zone — which one didn’t matter.
Until Germany officially reunified in
October 1990, Berlin retained elements
of this post-World War II administrative
artifact. East Berlin was the Soviet-occupied zone. West Berlin combined the
French, British and U.S. sectors.
The East German government began
constructing the Wall in 1961 (and later
added the border obstacles my unit observed) for one evil reason: to imprison
its own people. Why? East German
citizens were leaving, by the millions
Germany was losing its citizens. Before
the Wall, defecting to West Germany
was relatively easy for an East German.
Before the Wall — and its subsequent
intra-German border wire and guard
tower offspring — over 3.5 million East
Germans went west. Located deep within East Germany, West Berlin was the
most convenient port of entry.
The Wall’s cement barriers, barbed
wire, anti-vehicle obstacles and antipersonnel mine fields were built to keep
East Germans inside East Germany.
A FEW hardline left-wing bienpensants still preach a U.S.-USSR Cold
War equivalency. The Wall’s cold facts
reveal them for what they are: liars. No
surprise — some of them have become
Putin apologists.
31
November 19, 2014
IRAN: November 11, 2014
The fix is in: What could possibly go wrong?
L
But how keep the yokels interested?
ike an old trouper trying to
find a new audience for his Simple: The leading man has to act as
same old show, our president if he doesn’t know how the show will
and thespian-in-chief is giving it a game end. And in Barack Obama’s case, it’s
he really doesn’t.
try. Consider the press conference he possible
He’s always found
gave the day after
his own act utterly
the results of this
convincing
—
year’s
midterm
even if fewer and
elections were in
fewer of the rest of
— and so many
us do these days.
Democratic
inBut the show must go on! The scencumbents were out. The press conference seemed to go on for almost as long ery has been repainted, the champagne
as the election had. Toward its merciful chilled, and the caviar prepared for the
end, one member of the press corps was cast party. (Fresh from the Caspian Sea,
tactless enough to raise the nettlesome no doubt, and maybe the Black, too,
topic of Iran, which is about to become as befits a joint Russo-Persian producthe world’s next nuclear power. The retion.) The whole international cast is alply the president gave, and gave, and ready practicing its bows. Soon enough
gave went on for some time. (In this ad- the curtain will go up, and this rollickministration, a surfeit of words is used ing farce can have its formal opening.
Nobody need know that it masks a real
to cover a deficit of meaning.)
tragedy, as appeasement has a way of
TO CONDENSE the president’s doing.
It’s going to be a Great Moment in
answer, he’s done everything right, the
mullahs are the soul of reason, and stay the American theater, the dramatic antuned. That last is the most important. nouncement that at the last minute Iran
Because unless the suspense is sustained has agreed to suspend work on its nutill the last minute, the whole show will clear weapon and give up its dream of
flop. The way the president’s party just having a Bomb all its own. It’ll make a
happy headline: Signature Achievement
did at the polls.
It’s an old script (original title: Peace in Foreign Policy! And a fitting match
in Our Time), and any resemblance to for this president’s Signature Achievereality may be only coincidental, but ment in domestic policy, aka Obamit’s got to be advertised as All New. acare, another work forever in progress.
The script has been blocked out for at Or maybe regress. One never knows.
The trick is to maintain the air of faux
least a year now, but the last act must
still come as a surprise. Or the audience suspense. For example: “Kerry: ‘Real
won’t stick around for the Happy End- gaps’ stymie nuclear accord with Iran,”
ing, which has been in the works for so said the headline in Sunday morning’s
paper. Later that same day, the presilong it’s getting dusty.
Paul
Greenberg
dent duly echoed his secretary of state:
“There’s still a big gap. ... We may not
be able to get there.” Both seemed to be
reading from the same talking points.
Oh, the thrilling, cliffhanger suspense of
it all! Even if anybody who’s followed
these “negotiations” must have a pretty
good idea by now just how they’ll turn
out. Given a choice between deterring
the fanatical regime in Tehran now or
trying to contain it later, our president
has again chosen the path of least resistance in foreign policy. As he tends to
do. Deterrence, like other hard choices,
is so much trouble.
WITH THIS administration, procrastination took the place of policy
some time ago. Or does anybody really
think our fumbling, bumbling leaders
are going to out-bargain the mullahs in
their own Persian bazaar? If so, I’ve got
a barely used flying carpet you can have
cheap.
The “surprise” ending of this play
has been in the script all along: Iran will
publicly (if only publicly) forsake its
plan to join the world’s nuclear club, and
in turn the West, with the eager support
of the Russians and Chinese, will back
off its economic sanctions against that
country, as it’s already begun to do. Just
as those sanctions were beginning to pay
off. At this point it’s all over but the formal signing of another worthless treaty,
complete with cheers and applause. Give
‘em a happy ending every time. At least
for a while. Isn’t that how North Korea
got its Bomb a couple of decades ago?
Call it The Great Sham, and it must be
maintained in tandem with the mullahs’
Great Stall, which has won them ever
more time to expand Iran’s network of
nuclear plants from Fordo and Bushehr
to Arak and Parchin. ... The road ahead
has already been cleared. And it leads
right over a nuclear cliff. But what, this
president worry? The fix is already in:
Washington gets its meaningless treaty,
Teheran gets its Bomb, and everybody’s
happy! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, there is this little country called
Israel. It’s already taken out a series of
budding nuclear plants in its near neighborhood, first in Iraq and then Syria, and
now one after the other in Iran, where
another “accident” occurred just the
other day. All without fanfare, of course.
That would be undiplomatic.
But the message from Jerusalem is
clear enough: Unlike the Czechs at Munich almost a century ago, the Israelis
may not be prepared to go gently into
that not so good night. This sacrificial
lamb could yet turn out to be a lion.
There’s no telling with these people,
a stubborn and stiff-necked bunch since
the Book of Acts, if not before. And they
keep insisting on sticking around. Unlike this administration, they seem to
understand what is at stake in this show:
their very existence.
Nor do its Arab neighbors seem happy at the prospect of a nuclearized Iran.
Once the mullahs get their nuke, its rivals will have to have one, too, if only
to keep up. Egyptian dictators, Wahhabi
warlords, aspiring strongmen from Rabat to Riyadh, not to mention assorted
terrorist gangs and miscellaneous nutcases — they’ll all be racing to join the
nuclear club. And they’ll all find willing
suppliers, from Pakistan to North Korea.
Let the games begin.
SO WHAT could possibly go wrong?
Answer: plenty. Because behind all the
drummed-up suspense in Washington,
there’s more than enough of the real
thing to go around.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2014 • Volume 29, Number 47 • Hampton, Iowa

What happened? We dodged a bullet

Transcription

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