GOP Impurity Is No Myth

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photo credit: donkeyhotey

“To listen to many grassroots conservatives, the GOP establishment is a cabal of weak-kneed sellouts who regularly light votive candles to a poster of liberal Republican icon Nelson Rockefeller.”

So writes the popular conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg in a thoughtful column titled “The Myth of an Impure GOP.” Goldberg argues that the very idea of a weak-kneed GOP establishment is itself “a destructive myth,” refuted by the the disappearance of the Rockefeller Republicans.

It’s true. Nelson Rockefeller’s political disciples are as dead as he is. The last of the genuinely liberal Republicans have mostly left the party, like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee, or remain only nominally affiliated with the GOP, like Colin Powell.

Jon Huntsman was widely regarded as the most liberal Republican to seek the party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Huntsman endorsed Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms, was so strongly opposed to abortion that as governor of Utah he signed a bill that would ban the practice if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned, and said he wouldn’t approve a deficit-reduction deal that contained $10 in spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases.

Since the 1990s, even some of the biggest Northeastern moderates — Rudy Giuliani, William Weld, Christine Todd Whitman, and Chris Christie — have run as conservatives on the big issues: crime, taxes, welfare, the cost of public sector unions. Their more liberal positions, no matter how sincerely held, were issues that were peripheral to their agenda.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Collectivist Mind Game, Part 3: Demonizing Human Nature

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If Robert Heinlein were to write The Moon today (see Part 1), there’s no doubt his notion of the future oppressive global government on Earth would be very different. With such forces at play, the free-market revolution in Lunar colonies would likewise be fought by different means, struggling to overcome the tidal wave of government indoctrination and demonization, in addition to an army of statist looters hiding behind the army of statist moochers, who will be hiding behind an army of statist Blue Helmets of the statist United Nations.

That would be an asymmetrical warfare if ever there was one. The individualist free-market rebels wouldn’t be able to respond in kind by playing the collectivist mind games with the statists because it would turn them into their own enemies. Their only hope would be to learn to recognize the game when it is being played, not to fall for any of its seductive illusions, methodically expose the players at every turn, call every little manipulative trick in their arsenal for what it is, and help to immunize the rest against its corruptive influence.

The tidal wave of propaganda notwithstanding, the rebels would still have the most important ally on their side — human nature. No matter into what society they are born and what mind conditioning they receive, people will never stop being competitive individuals. They will always long for individual freedom, rationality, objectivity, personal achievement, and the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their families.

Without these traits humanity would never have risen from the ignorant tribal collectivism of hunters and gatherers, with its brutal mores, dark superstitions, and average life expectancy of 30 years, when few lived long enough to develop complete self-awareness, formulate a coherent individual thought, and pass it onto others. There would be no division of labor, no markets, and no capitalist wealth to sustain the advances in science, arts, and technology — let alone to feed the multitudes of Marxist intellectuals and statist plutocrats. There would be nothing to lose and nothing to fight for.

Admittedly, the Marxist notion of human progress is a spiral that would return humanity to that stateless, moneyless, classless, and selfless collectivism — except on a higher level. For that purpose they must, so to speak, put the genie of individualism back into the bottle, and the only way they can do it is by demonizing human nature itself.

Read more from this story HERE.

RINO Lies and Clever Myths

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The best thing about math is that it’s a constant. The numbers are what they are. That’s why I’m a data guy, because as a person that believes in absolute truth I have a tendency to like things cut and dried.

Leading up to the 2012 election several lies and clever myths were postulated by the ruling class know-it-alls and the charlatans who act on their behalf, and you can bet they will continue peddling their wares this year in light of the results. But the beauty of real numbers is they cut through all the horse puckey right to the real truth. To prepare you for the onslaught of misinformation between now and 2016 from both the mainstream media and the Republican Party establishment, I have prepared a handy guide of real information to arm you with the truth.

Lie and clever myth #1: Republicans lose elections because they’re too conservative so independents side with Democrats.

TRUTH: Romney won independent voters in the crucial battleground states of Virginia and Ohio, two of the three states he had to win to win the presidency. In Florida, the other battleground state Romney had to have, he actually did 8 points better among independents than McCain did in 2008. In Colorado, Romney won independents by four points, which was 14 points better than McCain performed there four years ago.

Lie and clever myth #2: Romney lost because of the GOP’s alleged “war on women” so that means Republicans can’t be pro-life anymore.

TRUTH: What the GOP really has is a diversity problem. White voters in every demographic – including women and young voters – voted for Romney. Let me repeat that: a majority of white voters regardless of age and gender voted for Romney. For example, Romney won white women by 14 points. A massive turnout of racial and ethnic minorities – black turnout was equal to 2008 and the Hispanic turnout was a little higher – determined the election and gave Obama the support he needed to win.

Lie and clever myth #3: The Republicans energized their base, but it’s just shrinking so the party has to move left.

TRUTH: Remember the promises of 17 million evangelicals going to the polls that didn’t in 2008? Or perhaps you were sold on that Catholic voter backlash to Obamacare and its threat to religious freedom turning out values voters in a way Romney was incapable? Well, it turns out that neither happened.

The reality is 2.5 million fewer Evangelicals voted in 2012 than 2008. Fewer Catholics voted in 2012 than 2008 as well, despite the presence of two Catholic vice presidential candidates. 6.4 million Evangelicals actually voted for Obama. In the crucial battleground state of Ohio, Obama actually improved his white Evangelical turnout by 8% compared to four years ago. That’s probably because of the automobile bailout, but also pro-choice television ads Romney was running in Ohio that angered some pro-lifers. Romney also ran those pro-choice television ads in Virginia, and CNN’s exit polls found the Evangelical turnout declined by 7% compared to 2008.

Yes, Romney did get the same hefty percentage of Evangelical voters that George W. Bush got in his victorious 2004 campaign, but the turnout wasn’t as large.

Efforts to make Romney’s liberal record on social issues seem palatable in contrast to President Obama’s leftist social policies didn’t pan out, as yet again the social conservative base of the Republican Party proved it doesn’t turn out in full force unless it sees stark differences between the two candidates themselves—regardless of what a candidate’s proxies say. Apparently when Romney told the Chick-fil-a crowd last August you’re “not a part of my campaign” they got the message.

But Christians weren’t the only social conservatives Romney failed to successfully turn out. Get this: Romney even did worse among his fellow Mormons than George W. Bush did in 2004 if you can believe that.

Conclusion

Romney lost the election in the end because his base wasn’t as energized as Obama’s was. All the so-called “skewed” polling that pointed to an Obama turnout of Democrats similar to 2008 turned out to be correct.

If you count the 2.5 million fewer Evangelicals that voted compared to 2008, and the 6.4 million Evangelicals that voted for Obama, a future Republican nominee has almost 9 million potential new voters in 2016 if he actually reaches out to them credibly and consistently.

Adding a majority of those 9 million voters to Romney’s 2012 coalition would make the Republican nominee virtually unbeatable in 2016. But to accomplish that feat he or she will have to make them feel welcome in the party, and assure them that he or she shares their courage of conviction.

These patriots want something to vote for and not just against.

Persistent future attempts to sell them on milquetoast while scaring them into voting against dastardly Democrats may profit those doing the selling, but will likely result in even more of them staying home four years from now—and thus the GOP losing the popular vote for the sixth time in the last seven presidential elections.

The real numbers show patriots are growing increasingly tired of being asked to cast votes they know they won’t be proud of later. Modernization of the Republican Party is one thing, but moderation is another.

The GOP leadership now has a choice: stand for something and win, or stand for nothing and lose. It appears its base won’t move left with it, so if the party moves left it will need a new base.
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To learn more about Steve Deace’s nationally-syndicated radio show, visit www.stevedeace.com or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.

The Collectivist Mind Game, Part 2: Demonizing the Opposition

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Most modern-day leftists in Western countries have abandoned the idea of a violent revolution, having replaced it with “the long march through the institutions” as part of the culture war to transform the society through cultural hegemony. Instead of commanding firing squads, they play mind games of manipulative illusions, in which the demonization of dissent plays a crucial role. The basic premise hasn’t changed: as much as the statists want you to love them, they want you to hate their opponents even more.

Until a time when political opposition can be eliminated completely, having opponents can still be useful: you can steal their ideas, take advantage of their desire to help the economy, and blame them for any of your own failures. In the meantime, certain rules must be followed to control the public opinion and, through it, the opposition itself.

Maintain the perception of being constantly under attack. Don’t examine the opponents’ beliefs, nor answer their arguments. Discredit any media channels that offer them a platform. Enforce the following media template: the opposition is evil, treasonous, unfathomable, and psychotic. They can’t be reasoned with. They are inspired by fascism and financed by a conspiracy of shady oligarchs. Defame their donors. Whatever the mischief you’re planning to pull off, accuse them of doing it first; then proceed as planned, describing your actions as a necessary intervention. And ridicule, ridicule, ridicule!

This is what made it easy for Stalin to purge his opponents: by the time he charged them with treason, the orchestrated media coverage had already made them universally hated. Having purged all of his enemies, Stalin continued to manufacture the evidence of their presence. There came a time when even the true believers were being rounded up and forced to confess publicly about one or another fabricated “crime” against the people and the Party. Some did it to avoid torture, some to save their families, and some even cooperated out of the altruistic desire to support the illusion and keep everyone else’s beautiful dream alive. Unfortunately for them, that beautiful dream required human sacrifice.

At the same time, Stalin used the only remaining high-ranking Jew in his government, Lazar Kaganovich, as a perpetual scapegoat. Himself a ruthless henchman who organized a number of purges, Kaganovich ended up serving in the capacity of an unpunishable bumbling idiot, a “token Jew,” and a darkly comic relief. Implicitly blamed for one government blunder after another, this Joe Biden of Stalin’s regime was moved from ministry to ministry only to be blamed again and reassigned to yet another top-level position. As expected, the people’s reaction was a universal loathing and bewilderment: how can Comrade Stalin be so soft and trusting of this evil Jew? Kaganovich outlived them all; he died in 1991, among friends and family, at the age of 97.

Read more from this article HERE.

Beware of Those Advising GOP To Unilaterally Disarm

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Isn’t it ironic that Republicans keep receiving advice to be more conciliatory and work with President Obama while President Obama not only is receiving the opposite advice but fully intends to be even more divisive in his second term?

On “Meet the Press” last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said: “There’s also a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the (Republican) party. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is they still sort of look down on minorities.”

That is outrageously false, but lest you think hypersensitivity to race is all that’s bothering Powell, he made clear that he also has a problem with the GOP’s policies. He said: “In recent years, there’s been a significant shift to the right, and we have seen what that shift has produced: two losing presidential campaigns.” A shift to the right? You’ve got to be kidding. Why isn’t Powell concerned about Obama’s uber-leftism?

“Republican” Powell also said that the GOP has become the party of the rich and that it needs to address the issues of education, immigration and climate change before the next election — you know, to imitate Barack Obama’s party of moderation. Here again, it’s disgraceful that Powell has endorsed Obama’s class warfare slander.

This past Sunday, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on “Face the Nation,” was only slightly more charitable toward her own party. She said, “The Republican Party certainly has to stop turning off large segments of the population.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Reconsidering Michele Bachmann

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The Washington Post reports today that al Qaeda’s successful attack on the Algerian natural gas plant has greatly boosted al Qaeda’s prestige in Africa. Along the way, the Post notes rather casually:

The assailants were well-trained and armed with what appear to have been weapons from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s arsenal.

The overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi has turned out to be a terrible blunder. It has empowered radical Muslims, led directly to the Benghazi debacle, and scattered Gaddafi’s armory among terrorist elements, including al Qaeda. There has been, of course, no accountability for the Libya decision, either with respect to the Obama administration or others outside the administration who supported Obama’s policy.

All of which reminded me of Andy McCarthy’s column in National Review. McCarthy criticizes John McCain for his support of Obama’s failed Libya policy, and contrasts McCain with another Republican who gets less respect as a foreign policy expert:

“. . . Bachmann actually opposed U.S. intervention in Libya. She claimed — stop cackling! — that many of McCain’s heroes might actually be jihadists ideologically hostile to the U.S. and linked to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror enterprise’s North African franchise. She even thought — yeah, I know, crazy — that if Qaddafi were deposed, the heroes would get their hands on his arsenal, ship a lot of it to AQIM havens in places such as Mali and Algeria, and maybe even turn rebel strongholds such as Benghazi into death traps for Americans.”

Read full article HERE.

The Final ‘Coming Out’ of the Communist Left in America

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In the book, “1984,” George Orwell wrote that “the most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” Even more compelling, Orwell said of the future: “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

It is hard to dispute that the progressive left has a stranglehold on pop culture in America. Firmly entrenched in media, academia and the entertainment industry, and more emboldened than ever, it controls the present.

Our history has long been under assault, particularly in universities, but never as aggressively as we see in a 10-part Showtime documentary produced by Oliver Stone, “Untold History of the United States.”

Commenting on Stone’s latest work in a FrontPage column, David Horowitz calls it “a ludicrous encapsulation of the Kremlin’s view of the Cold War, amplified by the Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Hamas version of the post-Communist decades.”

And he is qualified to make such a judgment. A self-proclaimed “red-diaper baby,” Horowitz was one of the founders of the “New Left” in the 1960s and an editor of its largest magazine, Ramparts. In his memoir, “Radical Son,” Horowitz traces his odyssey from an angry far-left activist to conservative writer and policy advocate. He is now president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and editor of FrontPage Magazine.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Collectivist Mind Game: Demonizing the Non-Compliant (Part 1)

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In the libertarian sci-fi classic, “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” Robert A. Heinlein describes a successful revolution of the individualistic, free-market-oriented residents of the Moon against the Earth’s tyrannical big government. The ins and outs of agitating and organizing the masses to fight the oppressive Authority feel just as realistic as the finer points of everyday life in the underground Lunar cities of the future.

The proposed revolutionary scenario could even serve as a workable model for similar real-life endeavors, if only the renowned futurist author hadn’t neglected to factor in the immanent function of any oppressive regime: systemic brainwashing of its subjects through the media, education, and entertainment channels.

If the tyrants on Earth were worth their salt, all the freedom-loving colonists would be subjected to an intense, manipulative indoctrination, which would shape their self-image as small and sinful “little guys” vis-à-vis the powerful, virtuous government that serves the powerless and protects them against all enemies, including themselves.

Thus, the government’s propagandistic narrative would establish the illusion of a society divided into three major classes: the ruling government class, endowed with benevolent powers to guide or punish; the majority class of hapless losers, whose survival depended on the government’s largesse and protection; and an unquantifiable class of demonized mysterious enemies of the government and, by extension, of the people, who would be the perceived culprits of all failures, hardships, and misery of the little guys’ everyday existence.

The majority class would itself be divided into an assortment of narrow-interest groups, held together only by the glue of government’s redistributive, pacifying and equalizing powers, as well as by their shared hostility towards the designated “enemies.”

Read more from this story HERE.

A ‘Fast and Furious’ Foreign Policy

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photo credit: al jazeera english

Let’s get this straight: Guns are too dangerous to be left in the hands of ordinary Americans. But guns in the hands of unknown rebels, who may turn out to be violent extremists, are just fine.

At the same time the Obama administration is threatening to curtail access to firearms in order to prevent gun violence at home, the president is channeling Warren Zevon abroad: “Send lawyers, guns, and money.”

And send them to the most dangerous, unstable places in the world.

The United States armed the rebels who overthrew Qaddafi in Libya. The administration is at least contemplating arming anti-Assad rebels in Syria. And although France balked at the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we will be providing logistical support to our freedom-fries friends in Mali.

What could possibly go wrong?

Read more from this story HERE.

Let’s Not Double-Down on a Failing Medicaid Program

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In a few short weeks Gov. Tom Corbett will go before the state legislature and submit his FY 2013-14 budget. One vital decision the governor and our state leaders will have to make is whether to expand Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program beyond the nearly 20 percent of the population already covered. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare, mandated the expansion to include all individuals below 133 percent of the federal poverty level – $30,000 for a family of four; however, last summer the Supreme Court held this mandate was too onerous for states.

Now it is up to Pennsylvania to decide whether it will expand this broken, costly program. Given the difficult budget choices the state has already had to make in recent years to balance its books, as required by law, the answer is very simple: Pennsylvania should join the growing list of states choosing not to expand. To embrace expansion would crowd out vital funding to our schools and universities, to rebuilding our roads and bridges, and to those social welfare programs to which our state is already committed.

Last month, the governor made the wise decision not to establish a state level health care exchange in Pennsylvania, joining 24 other states and protecting hardworking Pennsylvania families from burdensome government overreach.

Corbett stated: “It would be irresponsible to put Pennsylvanians on the hook for an unknown amount of money to operate a system under rules that have not been fully written.”

What is true in the case of creating a health exchange is even more so in the case of Medicaid expansion.

Pennsylvania currently has 2.4 million people enrolled in the failing Medicaid program. The program accounts for nearly one-third of the state’s budget costing taxpayers $8.2 billion in 2012. Overall welfare spending by the state was $10.5 billion (almost 40 percent of the entire budget). The Medicaid expansion would add between 800,000 and 1 million people to the rolls by 2022, burdening an already overworked system and exploding state spending. Even after the federal government’s generous cost-sharing, the cost of expanding the program is $2.8 billion by 2022 according to a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The federal government seeks to entice Pennsylvania and other states into expanding their programs by promising to pay all the upfront costs during the initial years and then pulls back in the outlying ones. However, this promise is not altogether true. The head of the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Gary Alexander, testified before a congressional committee last month that the expansion would cost $222 million to the state taxpayers in administrative and other costs during the first year, $378 million the second year and $364 million the third year, rising to an estimated $883 million by fiscal year 2020-21.

Even that is not the end of the story regarding the open-ended nature of taking part in the Medicaid expansion. President Obama indicated in his 2013 budget that the federal government may renege on its 90 percent payment promise putting Pennsylvanians on the hook much more than the estimated $2.8 billion dollar cost for the expansion. Given the current fiscal realities in Washington, a decrease in the matching amount is an almost certainty. Given the current fiscal realities in Harrisburg, this new financial burden on the state’s already stretched thin budget is something Pennsylvania cannot afford without further putting the pinch on educating our youth along with other crucial spending needs in the state, which have had to undergo hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts in recent years to balance the budget.

The real white elephant in the room is the broken Medicaid program. Even with its high cost, Medicaid on average pays 55 cents for every dollar compared to private insurance. That’s even worse than Medicare, which pays 77 cents on the dollar. Many doctors reject the Medicaid patients outright due to the underpayments and thousands of pages of regulations. According to an August study in the Journal of Health Affairs, 32 percent of Pennsylvania’s doctors will not even accept new Medicaid patients.

Medicaid can be fixed, but is going to require the federal government to give the states more flexibility. A few have been granted waivers including Indiana, which established health savings accounts for Medicaid recipients: a free market reform proven to help lower costs. The best fix to the 50-year-old program would be for all the states to have their Medicaid funding block granted (as was successfully implemented with welfare reform in the 1990s) with no strings attached, and no illusory promises from the federal government. Then Pennsylvania and other states will be able to innovate and find the best, most cost effective ways to cover those in need of medical coverage.

Rather than doubling down on failure, Pennsylvania should not expand the Medicaid program beyond the nearly 20 percent of its population already covered. Let’s not make an open-ended promise Pennsylvania cannot keep to a program badly in need of a cure.

Randall DeSoto is the political director for Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania.