Mitt Romney: A good man. The right fight.

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Over the years, one of the more troubling characteristics of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self-loathing. It would be a shame if we Republicans took a narrow presidential loss as a signal that those are traits we should emulate.

I appreciate that Mitt Romney was never a favorite of D.C.’s green-room crowd or, frankly, of many politicians. That’s why, a year ago, so few of those people thought that he would win the Republican nomination. But that was indicative not of any failing of Romney’s but of how out of touch so many were in Washington and in the professional political class. Nobody liked Romney except voters. What began in a small field in New Hampshire grew into a national movement. It wasn’t our campaign, it was Romney. He bested the competition in debates, and though he was behind almost every candidate in the GOP primary at one time or the other, he won the nomination and came very close to winning the presidency.

In doing so, he raised more money for the Republican Party than the party did. He trounced Barack Obama in debate. He defended the free-enterprise system and, more than any figure in recent history, drew attention to the moral case for free enterprise and conservative economics.

When much of what passes for a political intelligentsia these days predicted that the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan meant certain death on the third rail of Medicare and Social Security, Romney brought the fight to the Democrats and made the rational, persuasive case for entitlement reform that conservatives have so desperately needed. The nation listened, thought about it — and on Election Day, Romney carried seniors by a wide margin. It’s safe to say that the entitlement discussion will never be the same.

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters. While John McCain lost white voters younger than 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 4½million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.

Read more from this article HERE.

Stuart Stevens was the chief strategist for the Romney presidential campaign.

GOP Must Fight Corporate Welfare

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No one accuses establishment Republicans of being terribly brave or bright, but this insanity has got to stop: Democrats repeatedly frighten Republicans into accepting their statist agenda and then blame them for behaving like, well, Democrats. Republicans just keep falling for it.

Consider the president’s most vulnerable issue: Obamacare. During the election, Democrats didn’t bother to defend their horrible law so much as to delight in the fact that Mitt Romney authored it. When Republicans correctly said we couldn’t afford it, Democrats just as correctly responded that we couldn’t afford President George W. Bush’s massive Medicare expansion. Lost was the far more consequential fact that government-run health care is lousy and, worse still, incompatible with freedom.

It’s time for Republicans to stop playing checkers and start playing chess.

First, we must face the reality that conservatives are in the minority. Forget the perennial Gallup polls showing that self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals 2-1. This is in name only. It’s a reflection that we have successfully promoted a brand but have failed to explain its benefits. Meanwhile, the Democrats have established an actual majority voting alliance of beneficiaries of government largesse.

The implications are staggering. Our Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton rarely agreed on anything except this: Once the voters turn the public treasury into a public trough, the republic is lost. From the ashes of our failed American experiment, a dictatorship likely will arise.

Read more from this article HERE.

Secession: “Absolutely Nothing in the Constitution Prohibits It”

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For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.

Since Barack Obama’s re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitions for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let’s look at the secession issue.

At the 1787 constitutional convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”

On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?

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Seeing No Evil

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If you want to understand why President Obama was reelected despite a largely unsuccessful presidency and almost unprecedentedly high and continuous unemployment, just look at the Cuban-American vote.

In fact, if you want to understand America today — specifically, why it is in decline — just look at the Cuban-American vote.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, “The president captured 48% of the Cuban-American vote in Florida — a record high for a Democrat.”

Democratic presidential nominees went from 25 percent of the Cuban-American vote in 2000, to 29 percent in 2004, to 35 percent in 2008, to 48 percent in 2012.

We obviously have a dramatic trend here.

Read more from this article HERE.

Brave New Creed: ‘No Country for Old (White) Men’

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photo credit: marion doss

Collectivists of the Washington establishment, representing both major parties, have analyzed the 2012 election results and come to a lovely conclusion: old white men are the problem. The only difference of opinion between the two factions regards how one ought to handle it.

Democrat experts declare that laughable old coots are the natural core of the Republican Party, so one need only join the cool leftist majority and leave Grandpa in his kitchen chair to mutter to himself until death shuts him up for good. Republican experts, as the reluctant stewards of these cantankerous fogies, are more circumspect: they merely want to leave Grandpa ranting in the corner with his talk radio shows, while they attend to the urgent business of selling off his prized possessions (e.g. property rights, national sovereignty).

On one side we have the Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Paul Krugman types haughtily declaring that the Democrats are the party of women and minorities, and the Republicans the party of old white men. See how colorful, female, and young we look? See how monotonously white and graying they look?

On the other side we have campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, ACU chairman Al Cardenas, and others declaring that “Rush Limbaugh’s audience” should be ignored as a bunch of old white men who (apparently for that very reason) no longer represent America. Since when is “representing America” a matter of head counts and demographics, rather than of principles? Such thinking seems reasonable only to men who have lost the forest of encroaching leftist authoritarianism for the trees of electoral victory. (See how well their Constitution Fire Sale method has worked out so far!)

This mocking, bitter dismissal of the mature white male is a nearly poetic symbol — as if we needed another one — of the degraded state of civilization. Old men — whether white, black, olive, yellow, or red — have traditionally been regarded as the sage voices in their communities with regard to matters of public policy and private virtue. Having seen more, learned from mistakes, and grown weary of youth’s careless chasing after the chimerical “new,” they have commonly been appreciated as a steady source of common sense and moral rectitude. Age may not necessarily bring genuine wisdom, but it has traditionally served an invaluable function in humanity’s natural system of checks and balances: it casts a skeptical eye upon youth’s grand designs, thus raining on the often misguided parade of “progress.”

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After Fiscal Cliff Comes Fiscal Avalanche, Rejection of U.S. Debt

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While Washington is preoccupied with the so-called fiscal cliff, little attention has been given to the fiscal avalanche that will occur if we continue down an unsustainable, long-term path, causing markets to turn sour on U.S. debt and leading to a spike in interest rates.

Such a eurolike crisis would make the fiscal cliff look like a dip in the road. Unlike driving off a cliff, which you can see coming and make last-minute adjustments to avert, we cannot predict with any reasonable certainty when the avalanche will break. If it does, there will be little anyone can do to prevent its devastating effects.

No one knows just how long the United States can continue to accrue massive debts before lenders lose confidence. Delaying significant fiscal restraint for yet another year will send the wrong signal to financial markets and may serve as a tipping point that could lead to disastrous consequences for our economy.

If U.S. creditors decide that our debt is no longer the safest form of investment available, demand for Treasurys will drop, interest rates will rise and the cost of servicing our debt will begin to explode. Paying interest on our national debt will quickly crowd out spending on almost all other federal priorities. At that point, any deficit reduction undertaken by Washington — including the sorts of spending cuts or tax increases being discussed today — will be too little, too late.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that under the most likely policy scenario, in 30 years, net interest payments on the debt could total $3.8 trillion in today’s dollars. That is more than total government spending for 2011.

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Mark Steyn: Jill Kelley for Secretary of State

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Let us turn from the post-Thanksgiving scenes of inflamed mobs clubbing each other to the ground for a discounted television set to the comparatively placid boulevards of the Middle East. In Cairo, no sooner had Hillary Clinton’s plane cleared Egyptian air space then Mohammed Morsi issued one-man constitutional amendments declaring himself and his Muslim Brotherhood buddies free from judicial oversight and announced that his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, would be retried for all the stuff he was acquitted of in the previous trial. Morsi now wields total control over Parliament, the Judiciary, and the military to a degree Mubarak in his jail cell can only marvel at. Old CIA wisdom: He may be an SOB but he’s our SOB. New post-Arab Spring CIA wisdom: He may be an SOB but at least he’s not our SOB.

But don’t worry. As America’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, assured the House Intelligence Committee at the time of Mubarak’s fall, the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization. The name’s just for show, same as the Episcopal Church.

Which brings us to Intelligence Director Clapper’s fellow Intelligence Director, Gen. David Petraeus. Don’t ask me why there’s a Director of National Intelligence and a Director of Central Intelligence. Something to do with 9/11, after which the government decided it could use more intelligence. Instead, it wound up with more Directors of Intelligence, which is the way it usually goes in Washington. Anyway, I blow hot and cold on the Petraeus sex scandal. Initially, it seemed the best shot at getting a largely uninterested public to take notice of the national humiliation and subsequent cover-up over the deaths of American diplomats and the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi.

On the other hand, everyone involved in this sorry excuse for a sex scandal seems to have been too busy emailing each other to have had any sex. The FBI was initially reported to have printed out 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other communications between Gen. John Allen, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and Jill Kelley of Tampa, one-half of a pair of identical twins dressed like understudies for the CENTCOM mess hall production of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.” Thirty thousand pages! The complete works of Shakespeare come to about three-and-a-half-thousand pages, but American officials can’t even have a sex scandal without getting bogged down in the paperwork.

For the cost of running those FBI documents off the photocopier, you could fly some broad to the Bahamas and have a real sex scandal. Instead, we’ll “investigate” it for a year or three, as we’re doing with Benghazi itself. At her press conference the other day, soon-to-be Secretary of State Susan Rice explained that she would be misspeaking if she were to explain why she misspoke about Benghazi until something called the Accountability Review Board has finished “conducting investigations” into “all aspects” of the investigations being conducted, which should be completed by roughly midway through Joe Biden’s second term.

Read more from this story HERE.

Madness: Exchanging One Pro-US Dictator For Another Dictator Who Hates Both the US and Israel

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Egypt’s new President (for life?), Mohammed Morsi, riding the afterglow of huge praise from President Obama and Hillary Clinton for his role in ending 8 days of hostility in Gaza, leveraged that glow to seize dictatorial powers over his countrymen.

Morsi a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is tied closely to the United States mortal enemy, Al Quaeda, has been aggressively seizing power since he gained office by winning a democratic election 52-48.

On Thursday he issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight & extended that same immunity to a committee drafting a new constitution for the country that many say has been hijacked by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies. Morsis’s critics say he is trying to push through an Islamist state that will marginalize women and minority Christians, infringing on personal liberties.

“Morsi today usurped all state powers & appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh,” pro-reform leader Mohamed El Baradei wrote. “This is a major blow to the revolution that could have dire consequences.”

The last time Hillary Clinton visited Egypt, her motorcade was pelted with tomatoes by Egyptians who felt they have been sold out by the Obama administration. These Egyptian citizens feel the Obama administration let Egypt fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, an arch enemy of democracy and the western worlds way of life.

But since the pelting of Hillary’s motorcade several months ago, the Obama administration has showered millions of dollars on the Morisis government in spite of his dictatorial moves and his aggressive disregard of previous peace agreements with neighboring country, Israel.

Many Americans think “foreign aid” should be based on the carrot and the stick approach. Regardless of the fact that America is broke, it still borrows money and prints it in order to dole out foreign aid. So lets help our friends, so they can help us.

This foreign aid money should have strings attached…It seems we have exchanged a previous dictator, who was friendly towards us, for a new dictator who is not friendly towards us or our close ally Israel. What kind of madness is this?

We are showering Egypt with billions of dollars; in fact Hillary just authorized giving the Morsi government 450 million in emergency funds on the heels of the just completed cease of hostilities in Gaza. Despite the fact Egypt has total control over weapons smuggled into Gaza and Hamas. Read more from this story HERE.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Tax Reform Might Start With a Look Back to ’86

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Tax Reform report of the Treasury Department to President Ronald Reagan, November 1984

As Washington grapples with the budget, it might be worth asking a simple question: What would Ronald Reagan do?

He was the last president to preside over a significant tax reform, one that did exactly what both candidates in this year’s presidential election said they want to do: lower tax rates and close loopholes.

And a critical part of that reform was to end the historical system of taxing capital gains at lower rates than ordinary income.

In the name of fairness, the Tax Reform Act of 1986 raised the maximum tax rate on long-term capital gains to 28 percent from 20 percent at the same time it reduced the maximum rate on ordinary income to 28 percent from 50 percent.

Read more from this story HERE.

An Open Letter to Conservatives

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I had a very exciting time at the Republican National Convention. My conservative allies and I all worked very hard in the presidential election.

When I woke up the day after the election, everything I had worked for appeared to be in ruins. An extreme leftist had been reelected president of the United States.

Some liberal Republicans immediately began to blame newly activated conservatives for the presidential defeat. I knew they were wrong. It was clear to me that these newly active conservatives would be the key to major future victories for conservative principles.

The day was Wednesday, November 4, 1964. The Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, had suffered a crushing defeat. He won just six states and 52 votes in the Electoral College. But from the ashes of that loss sprang a vigorous conservative movement.

The conservative movement grew from modest beginnings to become a major force capable of nominating and electing candidates at the local, state, and national level, including Ronald Reagan.

Read more from this article HERE.