Amnesty Would Only Make Republican Woes More Dire

/3 Comments/in , /by

Mitt Romney lost Latino votes Tuesday by a 44-point margin, a number that has caused some very principled conservative thinkers to panic unnecessarily.

Premiere Radio host Sean Hannity broke first, telling listeners Thursday: “We’ve gotta get rid of the immigration issue altogether. It’s simple for me to fix it. I think you control the border first, you create a pathway for those people that are here, you don’t say, ‘You gotta go home.’ And that is a position that I’ve evolved on. Because you know what — it just — it’s gotta be resolved.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer quickly followed suit, writing: “For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement. … The other party thinks it owns the demographic future — counter that in one stroke by fixing the Latino problem.”

Hannity and Krauthammer are tremendous talents who have done much good promoting conservative values and ideas. But on immigration and amnesty they appear to have a very short memory.

In 1984, President Reagan won re-election despite losing Hispanics 2-to-1. In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which both tightened immigration enforcement at the border and granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants. In 1988, Hispanics rewarded the Republican party by voting … even more heavily Democratic. President Bush lost Hispanics by 40 points, 70 percent to 30 percent. So much for amnesty as the “single policy change” capable of “fixing the Latino problem.”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Media Manipulation of the Petraeus Resignation

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo credit: isafmediaWatching CNN’s weekend ‘coverage’ of the recent resignation of former CIA Director Petraeus, I noticed that not a single mention was made about the potential impact his testimony, or lack thereof, might have on the upcoming hearings on the horrific terrorist attack upon our consulate in Libya. In fact, no mention was made about any upcoming hearings at all.

I wonder how many of my fellow Americans are aware that an American ambassador and three other men were killed in the recent Benghazi massacre in Libya? How many know of the heroic acts that occurred there? The Obama administration’s inaction, colossal failure of leadership, and probable dereliction of duty likely led to the deaths of these American patriots. Key officials in the Obama administration, including the President, may be found to have blood on their hands.

Former CIA Director Petraeus resigned for reasons yet to be fully clarified, but the liberal mass media has buried the real story. If Petraeus was compelled to testify in an ”Official” capacity, I believe he’d have been forced to ‘take the 5th’ on the stand regarding the massacre in Benghazi. I don’t criticize Petraeus though, if enough pressure is applied, we all could be persuaded. He knows what happened, and only as a civilian would he be able to testify truthfully. Thus, his resignation.

If subpoenaed, I believe Petraeus will be compelled to redact his testimony, not for protection of classified information, but rather for protection of his family. I believe he will testify, but only part of the story will be revealed. Hopefully, sufficient information, facts and time lines will surface and lead reasonable people to connect the dots and realize the truth. Of course the liberal media will employ their signature ‘slight of hand” and apply their ‘spin’ to the parts of the story they’d have otherwise buried.

If truth is revealed, we will find that the Obama administration was operating in Libya, Hungary and Syria to accomplish exactly what? Time will tell, but I think their inaction regarding the massacre in Benghazi was directly related to their objectives in Syria.

What is known for sure by anyone getting news from unbiased sources, is that the Obama administration and the mass liberal media supporting it, intentionally misdirected the American people by blaming the incident on a ‘reaction to a video’. Most know by now that this claim was manufactured and is false.

Given the mass media’s intentional redaction, omission and mis-direction of news coverage, it’s no surprise that we find our great Country on the fast track to mediocrity or worse. America’s allies are shaking their heads while enemies quietly applaud.

The mass media is now more powerful than the three branches of government combined. They’ve been allowed and encouraged to intentionally manipulate the electorate. Hiding facts and spinning the truth is expected in countries who’ve succeeded in controlling their citizens. I’m very concerned that we may see civil disobedience or worse resulting from the combined efforts of a mass media ‘manipulation machine’ and this current administration’s objectives. What I see is a mutual disregard for the Constitution. The liberal media and the present administration continue to manipulate the very people that the US Constitution was created to protect.

Just as this ‘transparent’ administration buried the facts of the ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal, they have and will again attempt the same regarding the terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi. Family members deserve answers as to why their hero kin, former Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed trying to save Ambassador Christopher Stevens and information officer Sean Smith in the Benghazi massacre. The same goes for the family members of Customs agent Terry who was killed in the line of duty defending America’s southern border. Truth though, is something Obama and his Chicago buddies have in short supply.

Perhaps I’m a bit naive, but I have faith in the vast majority of my fellow Americans. The problem we face is a voting block made up of increasing numbers of people who have little or no knowledge of history. Combine this with a manipulative mass media intent on hiding the truth and the problem becomes clear. Ignorance is not a reasonable excuse. It has been identified though and must be extinguished through education.

I’d not ask my family and friends to see things the way I do. I’d ask them to change the news channel often though. Spend a little time on the Internet, don’t take anything for granted, do a bit of research and compare what various news outlets are saying. Just take a little time to move around the dial for the sake of truth. I would not have written this article had I not seen the ‘lack’ of coverage that CNN had on the Petraeus story last weekend!

Time to Throw Social Conservatives Out of the GOP?

/23 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: wht_wolf9653It is time to throw the social conservatives out of the GOP. Look at what they got us — Barack Obama. It was the social conservatives who did it. They insisted the GOP support real marriage and children. To hell with that.

I’m getting this, in various forms, from lots of tea party activists. The GOP establishment in Washington is whispering it to each other. They look at Todd Aiken and Richard Mourdock and conclude that they, not Tommy Thompson, Heather Wilson, George Allen, Scott Brown, etc. are the problem.

It is time to get rid of the social conservatives.

What’s really going on here is that the people who voted Republican, but who disagree with pro-lifers and defenders of marriage, have decided it must be those issues. They can’t see how what happened actually happened unless it happened because the issues on which they disagree with the base played a role.

This is a psychological avoidance of larger issues and does not stack up to the data.

Mitt Romney won about a quarter of the hispanic vote and a tenth of the black vote.

Read more from this article HERE.

A Few Things I Never Want to Hear Again

/17 Comments/in , /by

Tired. That is my overriding sensation as I write this. How to bang one’s first impressions of hell out on a keyboard? Let us begin a new day, in a new world, with a first principle of sorts — in this case, a negative principle. Here is a short list of words or turns of phrase that I never want to hear again.

(1) “America is a center-right country.” Center and right are entirely relative terms. The “center” between Lenin and FDR, for example, is very far to the “left” of George Washington. And political self-identification is a meaningless standard of judgment, even by meaningless current standards.

Many on the “right” are fond of reminding us that only twenty percent of Americans self-identify as “liberals.” I actually heard Brit Hume trying to squeeze this bromide out during the Obama victory post-mortem. But in a nation that embraced a vast social welfare system eighty years ago, and has expanded it continually ever since; a nation that for the past fifty years has moved inexorably towards the locus classicus of socialist egalitarianism, government-controlled health care; a nation that elected and re-elected a man who has openly self-identified as a progressive and advocated wealth-redistribution; and a nation in which the popular culture is dominated by artless harlots, pimps, and gangsters, a “centrist” is a person who embraces social disintegration and authoritarianism. To be “moderately conservative” in such a milieu simply means that one finds the latest music video about teenage lesbian orgies just a little over the top.

America is not a center-right country, whatever that means. It is — notwithstanding its still-sane minority (which includes almost everyone reading this) — a socialist-leaning nation that lags behind the rest of the progressive world only due to a slight residual guilt complex regarding all that old Constitution stuff. The events of the past couple of days suggest that even that little bugaboo has now been largely overcome by the majority, for whom most inhibitions about accepting their chains — and chaining their neighbors — are now gone.

(2) “Mitt Romney was only the nominee because of a thin primary field.” Phooey. He was the nominee because the entire GOP establishment threw everything it had at all the other candidates, in order to guarantee that it would get the candidate most likely to succumb to their advice and direction. As of September 2012, Romney was the only candidate left in the primary field whom no one had ever described as a conservative, let alone a constitutionalist. That, in short, is why he was the nominee.

Read more from this story HERE.

Fork in the Road, Part 1

/1 Comment/in /by

New York Yankees great Yogi Berra once famously observed, “When you come to a fork in the road—take it.”

And that is exactly what the conservative movement, as well as the Republican Party, is now forced to do. The only question following yet another election loss to Barack Obama is which one?

The very same people that have shoved Mitt McDoles down our throats for decades now will re-emerge from the ruling class to tell us that Mitt Romney was too conservative (I know, I laughed out loud, too), so we have to abandon whatever shred of conservatism actually still exists within the Republican Party leadership to win.

Yet we now know that is a pernicious lie.

Romney did everything the cynical Karl Rove wing of the party says Republicans have to do to win. He abandoned his base when he said the grassroots uprising standing up for Chick-fil-a was “not a part of my campaign,” and he joined the liberal dog pile on Todd Akin. He played it safe and didn’t offer any major tax or entitlement reform ideas to avoid the fiscal cliff out of fear being demagogued. He ran on platitudes and talked more about how bad Obama is rather than what plans for the future he had. He even became the first Republican presidential nominee to run pro-choice television ads, which aired in battleground states like Virginia, Ohio and Iowa. Romney won independents in key battleground states as well.

And he still lost.

What we need to do is make a list of everyone in the alleged “conservative media” that peddles this tripe, or went on Fox News guaranteeing a Romney victory and told us how skewed all the mainstream media polls were (when in the last three presidential elections they’ve been exactly right), and resolve never to trust these people again.

Frankly, we should’ve known better than to trust them in the first place. During the past two primary cycles didn’t we watch many of these same people tell us Mike Huckabee was a Christian socialist, Ron Paul was a nut-case, Rick Santorum was a pro-life statist, and Newt Gingrich opposed the very Reagan Revolution he was a foot soldier in?

You can agree or disagree with any of the men I just mentioned and I certainly have disagreements with all of them. But that’s not the point. The point is the very same people trashing and slandering non-establishment candidates in primaries are the very same people that tell conservatives we have to be team players (see that as stand for nothing). And yet they attack us like they would never attack liberals. Perhaps if Romney had gone after the president in the final two debates on Benghazi the way he went after Gingrich and Santorum in the primary, he wouldn’t have lost the election.

But now it’s time to move forward.

I recently spoke to a group of grassroots conservative activists at the Institute on the Constitution in Baltimore, and shared with them that I believe we are a movement in a generational transition. On one hand there is the Reagan generation, and my generation on the other.

The Reagan generation sees how much freedom and liberty has been lost since Reagan, and are trying to do whatever they can to hold on to whatever is left before it’s completely lost. The hope is that if we hold on long enough and defeat Democrats with any Republican, we can create another perfect storm that gave rise to Reagan in the first place and it will be “morning in America” again.

My generation doesn’t have that nostalgia for the Reagan era, because we were growing up and not really paying attention or weren’t even born at all. Now that we are paying attention, we don’t see the country in the context of what has been lost but rather how much ground needs to be gained. We are not seeing this purely in the context of the next election cycle. We’re seeing this in a generational cycle, which is why we oppose compromises on important issues like life and the debt ceiling. We don’t really care what the ruling class and its brigade of hand-wringers masquerading as pundits and pollsters think, because we’re the ones that will pick up the long-term tab for the financial, moral, and spiritual brokenness of the country.

We’re looking at the next 40 years, not just the next four.

Ironically, though we may not be a part of the Reagan generation, we have the same perspective Reagan had in 1976 when he said the Republican Party ought to stand for something other than becoming more like Democrats, and there should be no more “pale pastels” but “bold colors” instead.

Eventually my generation is going to get its chance to lead because we have time on our side. Nobody lives forever. When we do get our chance to lead, and it may be sooner rather than later, we need to learn the lessons of recent failures lest we fail our children and grandchildren.

This election provided by plenty of hard lessons, but also a useful road map of how to win the future:

1. The truth still sets us free.
Yes, the mainstream media favors liberals, but just giving our yin to their yang doesn’t produce truth—it just produces another echo chamber. I couldn’t believe how many conservatives I know and trust who really thought Romney was going to win, and win convincingly, despite the fact several polling models with a 96% accuracy rate in the past two presidential elections said otherwise. Our version of propaganda is no more true than their version of propaganda. We are dangerously close to becoming the magically thinking, virtual reality-living creatures we accuse the Democrat base of being. If we want to advance truth, we need to believe the truth ourselves—even when it’s inconvenient. And the truth is we are no longer the dominant view in the culture, and we have some work to do to change that.

2. Hypocrisy doesn’t sell.
Pollster Scott Rasmussen says the single most unpopular piece of legislation in recent American history was the TARP bailout of 2008. Yet we nominated a candidate who was for it. Good luck going to Toledo and telling Ohioans making $15/hour and think their job was saved by the auto industry bailout that they didn’t deserve a government handout, but Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs did.

3. Cast a vision.
After the Democrats lost an election in 2004 they probably shouldn’t have lost, the more principled-progressive wing of the party took over. The result was an anti-Bush liberal uprising in 2006 similar to the anti-Obama Tea Party uprising of 2010. Next, the new progressives defeated the more pragmatic Clintons head-to-head in a presidential primary. Obama ran for president promising his base he would move the ball down the field for them with their crown jewel legislation—Obamacare. He then went right back to that base in 2012 and worked the exact same get out the vote model that worked in 2008.

He embraced his base, even on social issues, both in the White House and at his convention. While we were scoffing at him for never moderating, Obama was energizing his base all along in preparation for a tough re-election. The progressives cast a vision that took more than one election cycle, followed it through, and won. They never detoured no matter what the facts were on the ground because they have a courage of their conviction their vision is what’s best for the country. They wanted to win to govern. The Republican ruling class wants to govern to win. The Democrats want to run a country. The Republican ruling class wants to run a party.

Read more from this story HERE.

The GOP Needs Modernization, Not Moderation

/1 Comment/in , /by

photo credit: donkeyhoteyIf Mitt Romney had lost the election solely because of Ohio, I would be lamenting his lack of a populist appeal. Or, if he had lost Florida narrowly, I might be writing about how Gary Johnson played spolier.

Instead, I’m writing about an identity crisis. Make no mistake, the GOP faces serious challenges going forward. This wasn’t “just a loss.”

But that doesn’t mean the party should sell out its core values, either. In many cases, reinvention means drawing a clearer contrast with liberals. The GOP probably needs to reaffirm some values.

For example, it would make no sense for the GOP to abandon its role as the party of life. It would make no sense for the GOP to abandon its role as the party of individual liberty.

But there must be some reevaluation. It’s time to rethink, “who are we?,” ”what do we believe?” — and “why do we believe it?”

Read more about this story HERE.

America Voted to Expand the Nanny State, But Who is Paying the Nanny?

/0 Comments/in /by

Last night’s elections’ results didn’t change the balance of power much in Washington. It is still headed in the direction of runaway spending, expanding entitlements with more and larger government services. Of course, this costs tremendous amounts of money.

Bill O’Reilly summed up the election results yesterday:

“There are fifty percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. Who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it and ran on it. … Twenty years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney.”

As I wrote in my October 21 piece, the left has capitalized on being the party of the government dependent entitlement society. This population has been mobilized to vote and has tipped the balance of power. They are immune from the effects of a bad economy the private sector is mired in. Why should they care if taxes are raised?

The national debt of 16 trillion doesn’t affect them either, future generations will be saddled with this burden. We ran out of our own money long ago and are now spending our children’s/grandchildren’s money to afford today’s entitlements.

But what is important to this base, is getting stuff today… President Obama and his party have done the best job of promising that. But nothing is free, everything comes with some sort of price tag. That price is monetary and a loss of freedom from more intrusive big government protecting you from yourself by imposing its policies on you.

Britain’s Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

America had an opportunity yesterday to change that direction, but failed to grasp it when an alternative for fiscal responsibility was offered by the Romney candidacy.

Many Americans will now get what they voted for: A bigger and more intrusive nanny state…paid for by someone else, until they run out of money.
___________________________________________
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.

Welcome to the Divided States of America

/0 Comments/in /by

The GOP increased their majority in the House of Representatives. The “progressive” Democrats held on to a slim Senate majority. Barack Obama still occupies the White House.

With fifty three House members demanding that Obama answer questions about the lethal, ham handed disaster in Benghazi and the equally bungled cover-up, do not expect a sudden flowering of bipartisan harmony.

Especially since the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin have expressed happiness at Obama’s reelection. America will now find out what “more flexibility” means.

In the wake of Obama’s re-election, stocks nosedived across the board Wednesday morning, plunging over three hundred points. Worries about the pending “fiscal cliff” and fears that America will follow Europe over the precipice chilled investments. The Dow traded under 13,000. For the first time since early September the S&P 500 fell below 1,400.

Fears that Obama will introduce a carbon tax as a way to cut the U.S. budget deficit also frosted Wall Street. With the continuation of Obama’s hostile energy policies, perceptions that such a tax will have a major impact on America’s deficit are largely based on European style speculative wishful thinking.

Obama will attempt to reinstate Clinton-era tax rates on Americans who run small businesses; those described by Obama as “not paying their fair share”. Without the development of America’s domestic energy, a move that would create millions of jobs that could not possibly be shipped overseas, there is no reason to anticipate an economic boom in the United States. Without such a boom, Clinton-era tax rates will simply dampen investment, destroy small businesses and further damage the American economy.

The government’s $16 trillion debt and the looming $600 billion tax increase scheduled, along with mandatory spending cuts, otherwise known as the “fiscal cliff” further complicate the economic outlook.

Americans can fully expect that Obama’s second-term will lead to increased federal spending. As he did in his first term, Obama will expand government. Because he remains in the White House and “progressives” retain control of the Senate, obamacare will be fully implemented, yet another wet blanket on the economy, as well as a death sentence for aging Americans.

Welcome to the divided States of America.

While “progressives” celebrate a continuation of the downhill fundamental transformation of America from a Constitutional Republic into a run of the mill low growth high unemployment European style cradle to grave nanny state, half of the American population remain fully opposed to such plans.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Coming Age of Austerity

/2 Comments/in , /by

photo credit: KTL Shutterbug“Are the good times really over for good?” asked Merle Haggard in his 1982 lament. Then, the good times weren’t over. In fact, they were coming back, with the Reagan recovery, the renewal of the American spirit and the end of a Cold War that had consumed so much of our lives.Yet whoever wins today, it is hard to be sanguine about the future. The demographic and economic realities do not permit it.

Consider. Between 1946 and 1964, 79 million babies were born — the largest, best-educated and most successful generation in our history. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both born in 1946, were in that first class of baby boomers.

The problem. Assume that 75 million of these 79 million boomers survive to age 66. This means that from this year through 2030, an average of nearly 4 million boomers will be retiring every year. This translates into some 11,000 boomers becoming eligible for Medicare and Social Security every single day for the next 18 years.

Add in immigrants in that same age category and the fact that baby boomers live longer than the Greatest Generation or Silent Generation seniors, and you have an immense and unavoidable increase coming in expenditures for our largest entitlement programs.

Benefits will have to be curbed or cut and payroll taxes will have to rise, especially for Medicare, to make good on our promises to seniors.

Read more from this piece HERE.

If Romney Supporters Don’t Vote in Record Numbers, Obama Will Win

/2 Comments/in , , /by

It’s all a matter of perspective.

All along most of my fellow conservative pundits have been framing the 2012 election as a replay of 1980, with a former Republican governor earning a landslide mandate from an American people languishing under the failures of an unprepared liberal incumbent. While my ideology may put the fun in fundamentalist, all along I have disagreed with that narrative.

While Obama’s amateurish escapades may resemble Carter’s futility, Romney is not another Reagan. In fact, until the first debate in Denver when he routed Obama, Romney was on pace to be the most disliked major party challenger for president in the history of modern polling.

In addition, an entire generation that still believed in rugged individualism and Judeo-Christian morality has left us since Reagan’s era. They have been replaced by a generation far more conditioned to see government as the solution to our problems rather than an impediment to them.

For example, my home state of Iowa is a socially conservative state but since Reagan it’s only gone Republican in a presidential election once, and that was by fewer than 10,000 votes. Why? Because my home state is one of the oldest in the country (which means lots of folks on entitlement programs), and its biggest industry is agriculture (which is essentially a complete subsidy of the welfare state). Thus, Iowa has been voting Democrat out of personal financial vested interest for decades.

Furthermore, the nation is far more Balkanized culturally than it was in 1980. No Republican presidential candidate – let alone a conservative – could still win California. Now the Electoral College is essentially down to just a handful of states every four years, with most of the country entrenched as red or blue no matter whom the nominee of each party is or where the country is at. That makes obtaining the kind of national mandate Reagan twice received more difficult. Nowadays a Democrat has 200 Electoral College votes in the bank just by showing up on the ballot come Election Day, and that wasn’t true in Reagan’s time.

Because of this, since January I have been analyzing this election with 2004 as its predecessor for three reasons:

1. Obama’s approval ratings are roughly where Bush’s were then. Though the Obama economy is worse than Bush’s (and not as bad as Carter’s), Bush was also saddled with an unpopular war in Iraq that makes that a wash.

2. As a challenger Romney was saddled with many of the same negatives as Kerry. He didn’t excite his base, which is why Kerry and Romney each set the record for earliest to name a running mate, and each selected a younger more charismatic vice presidential nominee. Also the attempt by Obama to make the election a referendum on Romney instead of himself, by characterizing Romney as a wealthy socialite elitist out-of-touch with mainstream values, is exactly what Karl Rove successfully did to Kerry for Bush in 2004. And do you remember the flip-flops on display at the 2004 Republican Convention to remind voters of Kerry’s penchant for taking each side of each issue? Apparently there’s something in the water in Massachusetts because that has been a problem for Romney as well. Romney’s own campaign confidant perpetuated the label with his infamous “etch-a-sketch” remarks.

3. The framework of the Electoral College is virtually the same as it was in 2004, except for GOP states Indiana and North Carolina that were surprise pick-ups for Obama in 2008.

The metric of this race, with Obama getting a big post-convention bounce just like Bush did, Romney then getting a big post-debate bounce just like Kerry did, and the election essentially coming down to Ohio, is eerily similar to 2004 as well.

Polling

For the purpose of my analysis, I’m going to rely on the Real Clear Politics polling average for my polling information because it’s been proven to be the most accurate tool for public consumption out there. The final RCP polling average flat out nailed the last two presidential elections (and I urge you to go back and read this link to find out why it did so).

That doesn’t mean RCP is right this time. In fact, we won’t know who is right until after the people (or the lawyers) have their ultimate say. But in the past two election cycles no one has been more accurate than RCP.

Read more from this story HERE.