Welcome to the Divided States of America-Page 2

As founded, America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. America’s founding principles and the up to then unknown personal freedoms and liberties they unleashed are being replaced by the enticement of entitlements and empty promises of a free lunch. Without America’s founding principles leading the free world, mankind stands at the precipice of a thousand years of darkness.

Those who believe in American principles must continue to stand up and push back against the anti-growth, anti-prosperity, anti-morality, anti-God, anti-American agenda of “progressives”.

In 1776 George Washington’s Continental Army lost the battle for New York City. The year 1777 saw the loss of Philadelphia. In 1779-1780, his undermanned, underfunded, and underequipped army suffered greatly and shied away from major battles. It was not until the victory at Yorktown in 1781 that victory was achieved and Britain recognized the independence of the United States.

For Americans, this is today’s Valley Forge. The outlook is bleak and victory seems beyond grasp.

The choices are to give up or continue the fight.

In December 1944 during the battle of the bulge Brigadier General McAuliffe and his battalion were besieged within the city of Bastogne. German General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz gave McAuliffe two hours to surrender the town.

What was McAuliffe’s response?

To the German Commander: NUTS!

Today, in response to the smug, holier than thou attitude of the self-imagined, self-appointed members of the institutionalized “progressive” intellectual elite, there is no better response.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Fork in the Road, Part 1-Page 3

6. We’re too white.
African-Americans routinely vote with us on issues like marriage, yet there is almost never any Republican Party follow-up with them after they do. Latinos are one of the more socially conservative subcultures in America, and Romney did worse with them in 2012 than John McCain did in 2008. The reality is the country is becoming less white, so we’re going to have to come up with ways to apply our principles to the needs of non-whites like never before.

It doesn’t mean we have to pander to them or try to out amnesty the Democrats, but it may mean we may need to take a more incremental approach on some hot-button issues.

How can we demand that minorities stop seeing government as the primary vehicle to access the American dream when Republicans in the corporate class do it all the time? To ask African-Americans to totally abandon programs like affirmative-action, and to ask Latinos to look the other way while we mass deport some of their family members and friends is unrealistic when at the same time we allow Republicrats to get away with using government for their purposes all the time. Sometimes it’s like we’re writing the Democrats’ campaign commercials for them.

Look at Texas, one of the most Republican and conservative states in the country. About 38% of the state’s population is Latino, so how are conservatives making gains in a state with such a huge Latino population and can it be modeled nationally? No one would accuse Texas of being a moderate state—far from it. Most of us consider it conservative Valhalla, so why not follow its lead?

7. Pro-lifers are losing.
Please stop quoting polls telling me the country is more pro-life than ever before. When Richard Mourdock loses a U.S. Senate seat in a very Republican state for saying that all life, regardless of how it’s conceived, is a gift from God and deserves to be protected, then that means again we need to be honest with ourselves and stop believing our own fundraising propaganda.

Pro-lifers are the largest and most loyal voting bloc the GOP has, yet we have almost nothing to show for it except the carcass of Todd Akin abandoned on the side of the road by the GOP establishment. Akin is not a victim for his own mangled remarks, but we were victimized by a party establishment who decided three months ago they’d rather have Harry Reid as Majority Leader than a good man with a 96% American Conservative Union rating in the U.S. Senate. There was plenty of time to rehabilitate Akin in a very Republican state, but the ruling class piled on him instead.

If 40 years after Roe v. Wade the culture doesn’t believe my own family line conceived in horrific and traumatic circumstances has the right to live, then we have lost the most crucial moral debate of this age and need to completely re-evaluate what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

I remain optimistic. God is still on the throne. My Savior lives. More and more patriots are waking up. This is still the greatest nation on earth. Providence has allowed us to live in a nation where we can control our own destiny, and we can do so again if we have the same courage of conviction demonstrated by past generations that gave us the freedom and liberty we currently enjoy.

They that have ears to hear, let them hear.

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You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.

Fork in the Road, Part 1-Page 2

4. Stop demonizing our neighbors.
We called Bill Clinton every name in the book and even impeached him, and that didn’t work. We called Obama every name in the book, and all we did was help him to portray his failures as Bush’s fault and energize his base all the more. We called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and all we did was scare even more skittish advertisers away from conservative talk radio.

Yes, there is a double standard here. You should see some of the Tweets I receive after appearing on MSNBC, like when someone tweeted after I defended Richard Mourdock he hoped my daughters would get raped. We watch homosexual activists glitter bomb conservatives and can only imagine what would happen if we returned such fire. It’s not fair, but it is what it is.

I am as fiery as the next guy, and at times have not been able to hold my tongue, especially when it’s fun not to. But I’ve learned that while we don’t need to moderate our principles we do need to temper our approach. Ann Coulter shrillness may sell books to the already-converted, but it’s losing the culture at-large. We no longer have a country that accepts many of our premises, so we have to go into evangelism mode. That requires a relationship and trust, and it’s hard to build that rapport with people while demonizing them. Pardon the cliché, but we need happy warriors. As the late D.L. Moody once said, “When you’re winsome you win some.”

Most of our neighbors we are angry with for voting the way they did don’t go to church and were taught things about this country in public schools that are contrary to this nation’s actual history. How should we expect them to vote given those circumstances? We’re not a silent majority anymore. We’re a plurality in danger of becoming a minority. If you want our neighbors to vote differently, then we have to change their worldview.

5. We need solutions – not just values.
Obama won young voters again despite the fact they’re the group hardest hit by his policies. They will be saddled with all the debt we’re tacking on, and live in a more dangerous world in the long run with the emergence of the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and a nuclear Iran.

We are losing them by trying to win them over to values that make freedom possible – Judeo-Christian morality, personal responsibility, limited government, etc. – yet they have been educated in an environment that makes these values foreign to them. It will only get harder to win them over as they get older.

For example, they don’t see the Second Amendment as a requirement to keep freedom secure from government tyranny, but rather gun control as a means of stopping little children from being killed by gang violence or gun accidents. See, they’re not looking for values, they’re looking for solutions.

For better or for worse, there is one Republican who has been attracting younger voters in the past two presidential primaries, and that’s Ron Paul. Granted, some are those whose only goal is to legalize marijuana, but that’s also a lazy stereotype. Many of them are young people who don’t understand why it’s their responsibility to pay for the lack of fiscal discipline of their forefathers, and why they have to die in foreign lands nation-building when our nation is declining here. Paul is offering them solutions to these problems and not just values. I don’t agree with all of Paul’s solutions, but I do think we could learn from this approach.

Do we have a solution for these young voters to their problems? Furthermore, do we have solutions to the problems with healthcare and job creation that middle class voters think much more about than they do the deeper moral crisis in the country? Changing worldviews is a long-term goal, but in the short-term we can still win elections by coming up with real conservative solutions to people’s problems as opposed to a general discussion of values.

Working class whites in Ohio who typically vote Republican and voted for Obama don’t see him as a Marxist putting us on the road to Greece. They see Obama as the guy that saved daddy’s job at the Chrysler plant and thus kept food on the family’s table.

Solutions trump values every time because people always vote out of vested interest.

Read the conclusion HERE.

Video: Gingrich-Obamacare Will Resemble Obama’s Sandy Response

The Obama administration’s response to Hurricane Sandy is an example of how President Obama’s healthcare law would work, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said in a Tuesday morning interview with MSNBC.

“I think as people watch the continuing devastation, it reminds [them] that Homeland Security as a department has once again failed, as it failed in Katrina,” Gingrich said. “And remember: This is the government that Obama wanted to have deliver your healthcare. So as you watch the long lines, you watch the failures, you watch the excuses, do you really want that to be the source of your healthcare?”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has lavished praise on the administration’s Sandy response, and on Obama specifically. Read more from this story HERE.

“Extraordinary Measures” Necessary Before End of 2012 as Debt Limit is Reached Again

The U.S. Treasury quietly warned at the end of a statement issued last Wednesday that it expects the federal government to hit its legal debt limit before the end of this year–which means before the new Congress is seated–and that “extraordinary measures” will be needed before then to keep the government fully funded into the early part of 2013.

On Aug. 2, 2011, President Obama signed a deal he had negotiated with congressional leaders to increase the debt limit of the federal government by $2.4 trillion. But, now, after only 15 months, almost all of that additional borrowing authority has been exhausted.

Although Treasury revealed in its statement on Wednesday that it was likely to hit the debt limit by the end of the year, Treasury Secretary Geithner failed to respond to a letter that Senate Finance Ranking Member Orrin Hatch and Senate Budget Ranking Member Jeff Sessions sent to him on Oct. 15 demanding that he notify them by Nov. 1 what he believes to be the exact date Treasury will hit the debt limit and the date he expects to begin using “extraordinary measures” to avoid it.

“Treasury continues to expect the debt limit to be reached near the end of 2012,” says the tenth paragraph of the “Quarterly Refunding Statement” put out by Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets Matthew Rutherford.

“However, Treasury has the authority to take certain extraordinary measures to give Congress more time to act to ensure we are able to meet the legal obligations of the United States of America,” said the statement. “We continue to expect that these extraordinary measures would provide sufficient ‘headroom’ under the debt limit to allow the government to continue to meet its obligations until early in 2013.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Yesterday’s Vote: Both Sides Lost

Though Obama failed to win a majority in the popular vote–and may even have lost the popular vote outright–he won enough votes in the Electoral College to claim victory. The same constitutional peculiarity that brought George W. Bush into office in 2000 may have returned Obama to the White House.

The voters also re-affirmed the results of the historic Tea Party election of 2010, returning Republicans to power in the House of Representatives. And yet the voters also retained Democrats in control of the Senate, preserving the results of the anti-war wave election of 2006.

The U.S. Congress is now divided between two parties whose members were elected on platforms of protest, each determined to stop the other from pursuing its policies.

In the days that follow, great efforts will be spent on explaining the results as consequences of many factors, big and small.

Perhaps Obama would have lost if not for Hurricane Sandy. Perhaps Romney would have won if he had fought harder over Benghazi or pushed back against personal attacks. Perhaps the GOP is out of touch with the country’s changing mores and demographics. Perhaps Democrats have not yet reckoned with fiscal reality.

Read more from this story HERE.

Gay Marriage Approved by Voters, First Time in US History

Americans for the first time approved gay marriage at the ballot box on Tuesday, pointing to changing attitudes on the divisive issue.

In Maine and Maryland, voters approved ballot initiatives to begin allowing same-sex unions. Those wins mark a first for a cause that had previously been rejected by voters in more than 30 states, including as recently as 2009 in Maine.

And in Minnesota, where gay marriage is already not allowed, voters declined to back an initiative that would enshrine in the state’s constitution a definition of marriage permitting only a union between a man and woman.

In Washington state, where voters also weighed an initiative to legalize gay marriage, the vote count was expected to stretch on for days. With half of the vote counted as of 3 a.m. Eastern time, nearly 52% supported the idea.

In Maine, campaigners for same-sex marriage said the win marked a turning point for their cause. “We made history here tonight and showed that voters can change their minds,” said Matt McTighe, the campaign director of Mainers United for Marriage. “That will serve as something of a signal to other states who have lost marriage fights before at ballot boxes. You can change those minds.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Huckabee and O’Reilly: “GOP Has a Problem Reaching Voters Who Are Not White Men and Want Stuff”

Republicans have not done a good job reaching minorities as the country has started to shift from a majority white society, which may have cost them the presidential election.

Mike Huckabee and Bill O’Reilly in separate interviews on Fox News said the GOP has a problem reaching voters who are not white men and want stuff – which is why, they said, President Barack Obama won reelection.

“The white establishment is now the minority,” O’Reilly said before the election was called for Obama. “And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama.

Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Wins Big in Governor Races, The Most Since the 1920’s

North Carolina voters elected their first Republican governor in two decades Tuesday, fanning the GOP’s hope of broadening their party’s hold on governor’s mansions across the country.

The victory by former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory came two years after Republicans snatched six governors’ offices in the midterm elections, giving the party 29 governorships to 20 for Democrats and one independent entering Tuesday’s elections, in which 11 gubernatorial races were to be decided.

When all the ballots are counted, Republicans could have as many as 33 governorships — the most since the 1920s and one more than they had in the 1990s.

Mr. McCrory defeated Democratic Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton to become the state’s first GOP chief executive since Jim Martin left office in early 1993. Mr. McCrory had lost his gubernatorial bid in 2008 to Democrat Beverly Perdue, who opted not to run for re-election this year.

Democratic governors are leaving office in North Carolina, Montana, New Hampshire and Washington, raising Republican hopes that at least some of those offices can be flipped to the GOP. But New Hampshire’s governor’s mansion remained in Democratic hands Tuesday, as did those in Vermont and Delaware.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ron Paul Republicans Win Closely Contested House Races

Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul will retire from Congress next year after serving for 12 terms, but several Republicans influenced by the iconic libertarian-leaning lawmaker will be arriving to take his place.

Thomas Massie won the race to replace retiring Kentucky Republican Rep. Geoff Davis, beating Democrat Bill Adkins by 20 percentage points. Massie, an ally of Paul’s son, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, raised nearly 10 times as much money as Adkins, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash, who was already vying to be the House’s next “Dr. No” in his first term, was re-elected with 58 percent of the vote. Democrat Steve Pestka had hoped to win the votes of independents and moderate Republicans who might regard Amash as too extreme, but failed to gain traction against the 31-year-old congressman.

In a neighboring Michigan district, Ron Paul Republican Kerry Bentivolio was elected to the House seat formerly held by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter. McCotter, who had failed to gather enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot, resigned from the House amid a petition scandal. Bentivolio beat Democrat Syed Taj.

Bentivolio spent four decades in the U.S. Army, but was painted by opponents as an eccentric. He raised reindeer and was an occasional Santa Claus. He was elected to Congress by a 7-point margin.

Read more from this story HERE.