Photo Credit: Daily Caller GOP strategist Karl Rove was caught on tape blasting Michigan Rep. Justin Amash as the “most liberal Republican.”
“The most liberal Republican is Justin Amash of Michigan. Far more liberal than any other Republican,” said Rove, who served as deputy chief of staff to former President George W. Bush.
The man dubbed “Bush’s Brain” in a New York Times bestseller blamed Amash’s libertarian leanings for this distinction.
“And why? Because he is a 100 percent, purist libertarian,” Rove said, “and if it’s not entirely perfect, ‘I’m voting with [House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi.”
Rove actually made the remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival in late June, but journalist Andrew Kirell tweeted out the video Monday. It was subsequently picked by a libertarian blog and local media in Michigan.
Photo Credit: U.S. AFRICA COMMAND/FlickrMarine Corps Col. George Bristol was in a key position in the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chain of command the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As such, he’s high on the list of people that some Republican members of Congress want to interview. But they don’t know where he is and the Pentagon isn’t telling.
Pentagon spokesman Major Robert Firman told CBS News that the Department of Defense “cannot compel retired members to testify before Congress.”
“They say he’s retired and they can’t reach out to him,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CBS News. “That’s hogwash.”
Bristol, a martial arts master, was commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara based in Stuttgart, Germany until he retired last March. In an article in Stars and Stripes, Bristol is quoted at his retirement ceremony as telling his troops that “an evil” has descended on Africa, referring to Islamic militant groups. “It is on us to stomp it out.”
Members of Congress in both the House and Senate, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have asked the Pentagon for assistance in locating Bristol so that they can question him about events the night of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. But those efforts have come up empty.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-06 01:52:302016-04-11 11:19:51Where is the Marine Colonel Who May be Key to Understanding Benghazi?
Photo Credit: Fox NewsRepublicans launch probe into ObamaCare mandate delay
By Fox News. House Republicans are investigating the Obama administration’s move to delay a key part of the health care overhaul, claiming the announcement was “completely at odds” with prior claims that ObamaCare was running on schedule and questioning what provisions might be delayed next.
“It’s clear we have no idea the full scope of delays and disarray that may be coming. The American public deserves answers,” Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement.
Republicans on Upton’s committee fired off a pair of letters on Wednesday to both the Treasury Department and Department of Health and Human Services. They demanded records detailing deliberations regarding the recently announced delay and ongoing talks about other “elements” of the law that some groups want “changed, delayed or repealed.” Read more from this story HERE.
Republicans “Stunned” Over Delay, Trying to Figure Out What to Do
By Byron York. The move stunned Republicans in Congress, who immediately asked: Whose feedback? What businesses were meeting with the White House? What deals did they make?
“These communications and the decision-making process related to the delay… have not been disclosed publicly,” wrote House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton in a letter to the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Along with 13 other Republican committee members, Upton demanded the administration reveal which businesses and which government officials were involved in the decision.
But the bigger question for Republicans is how to handle the administration’s surprise retreat. Should they focus on secretiveness, as Upton & Co. are doing? Should they push the White House to explain how Obamacare can still work when large employers don’t have to pay fines for not covering workers and, perhaps more importantly, don’t have to report their employees’ health care information to the giant new Obamacare bureaucracy, so the bureaucracy can determine whether those employees are eligible to buy coverage on the exchanges? Or should Republicans just keep pressing for repeal of the whole thing?
“I think we’ll almost certainly be sticking to a full repeal message all the way,” says one GOP Senate aide. “The question here is for the administration – not us – and it’s basically this: At what point will they realize that this law is unworkable?”
Probably never. When key Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote, after the delay announcement, that, “We are full steam ahead for the marketplaces opening on Oct. 1,” she was reflecting the administration’s determination to get the health care exchanges up and running no matter what. Delay the employer mandate? OK. Waive this or that rule? Fine. Just make sure the exchanges get going. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: M.Scott MahaskeyWhite House greases squeaky wheels on Obamacare
By David Nather. The delay of Obamacare’s employer coverage rules is giving the critics plenty of new ammunition — but that doesn’t mean the sudden movement is out of character for the administration at all.
It’s just the latest example of a pattern with the implementation of Obamacare: The Obama administration almost always listens to the squeaky wheel.
First more than 1,200 employers and health plans got waivers from early coverage rules. Next, many states that couldn’t decide whether to build a health insurance exchange or let the feds do it for them were given repeated extensions. And then, when Republican governors were holding out on expanding Medicaid, they were finally told there’s no deadline at all.
So when the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it would delay the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate for employers for a year, it was just one more piece of evidence that the administration is perfectly willing to bend the rules for some powerful interests — a a welcome invitation for other players to raise their hands in the coming months as the law heads into overdrive.
Already, other groups are grumbling at the decision. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Liberals blame GOP, Fox, Drudge in Obamacare fiasco
By Paul Bedard. The pro-Obama media watchdog Media Matters Wednesday, defending the administration’s surprise move to cancel implementation of major elements of Obamacare, said that Republicans were to blame and accused conservative media leaders like Fox News and the Drudge Report for ignoring the GOP’s role.
In a release, the liberal group said that Fox and Drudge instead charged that the one-year delay was political with the goal of pushing off the expected initial implementation disaster until after the 2014 elections.
“Fox News and the Drudge Report are ignoring years of Republicans obstructing the implementation of health care reform to accuse the Obama administration of delaying the law for political gain, in the process dismissing the fact that businesses are praising the administration’s move,” said Media Matters. Read more from this story HERE.
Realities Force President to Scale Back Vision for Obamacare
By Todd Beamon. Six years ago, presidential candidate Barack Obama stood before Iowa voters and introduced a plan designed to extend healthcare to all Americans.
“We can do this,” he said with confidence. “The time has come for universal, affordable healthcare in America.”
Three years ago, President Obama signed into law a plan designed to extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people.
“This is what change looks like,” he exulted.
But it has become clear that Obama’s vision for universal health care is dramatically different than it was that day in Iowa. The president been forced to cut, reshape and compromise on his signature Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because of economic — and political — realities. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: APWall Street Journal Apologizes for Not Fighting Hard Enough Against Obamacare
By Wall Street Journal. These columns fought the Affordable Care Act from start to passage, and we’d now like to apologize to our readers. It turns out we weren’t nearly critical enough. The law’s implementation is turning into a fiasco for the ages, and this week’s version is the lawless White House decision to delay the law’s insurance mandate for businesses, though not for individuals.
The employer mandate is central to ObamaCare’s claim of providing universal coverage. Companies with 50 or more “employee equivalents” must pay a $2,000 penalty per full-time employee if they don’t provide government-approved health insurance. The provision was supposed to start in January, and delaying it is like Ford saying its electric car is ready to go, except the electric battery doesn’t work.
But all of a sudden on Tuesday evening Mark Mazur—you know him as the deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy—published a blog post canceling the insurance reporting rules and tax enforcement until 2015 as Washington began to evacuate for the long Independence Day weekend. Enjoy the holiday, mate.
White House fixer Valerie Jarrett tried to contain the fallout with a separate blog post promising that ObamaCare is otherwise “staying the course.” That’s true only if she’s referring to the carelessness and improvisation that have defined the law so far. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-05 02:53:162016-04-11 11:19:55“Stunned” GOP Launches Probe into Obamacare Delay While Obama Continues to Grease the Skids (+video)
Stuart Stevens, the top strategist for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, declared to an audience of reporters at a breakfast last month that electing Hillary Rodham Clinton would be like going back in time. “She’s been around since the ’70s,” he said.
At a conservative conference earlier in the year, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ridiculed the 2016 Democratic field as “a rerun of ‘The Golden Girls,’ ” referring to Mrs. Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is 70.
And Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, seizing on the Fleetwood Mac song that became a Clinton family anthem, quipped to an audience in Washington, “If you want to keep thinking about tomorrow, maybe it’s time to put somebody new in.”
The 2016 election may be far off, but one theme is becoming clear: Republican strategists and presidential hopefuls, in ways subtle and overt, are eager to focus a spotlight on Mrs. Clinton’s age. The former secretary of state will be 69 by the next presidential election, a generation removed from most of the possible Republican candidates.
Despite her enduring popularity, a formidable fund-raising network and near unanimous support from her party, Mrs. Clinton, Republican leaders believe, is vulnerable to appearing a has-been.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-02 03:33:262013-07-02 03:33:26GOP Reveals its 2016 Strategy Against Hillary: She’s Too Old
John McCain warned the Republican Party of its demise if the Senate’s amnesty plan is not passed. “I think Republicans realize the implications of the future of the Republican Party in America if we don’t get this issue behind us.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-30 21:59:452013-06-30 21:59:45McCain: GOP Doomed if it Doesn’t Pass Amnesty Bill (+video)
Photo Credit: FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM / MCT / LANDOV
By Jay Cost. In the wake of the 2012 election, Republicans have been treated to seemingly endless prophecies of doom. Many have come from liberal Democrats, who would happily see the demise of the GOP. But more than a few Republicans have also made the case that the party must either change or disappear, and they focus especially on immigration. South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham argued recently that unless the GOP does something on immigration, it will face a “demographic death spiral” as the growing Hispanic population turns on Republicans.
Fortunately, claims like this are overblown. As Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics has noted, the Republican party’s defeat in 2012 had more to do with shifts in turnout, especially among whites and blacks, than it did with the party’s weak appeal among Hispanics. These shifts pose problems the GOP must address, but immigration reform won’t do it. A recent Pew poll found that whites and blacks tend to be the groups most suspicious of the immigration reforms put forward in recent weeks. As for the long-term future of the party, the losses the GOP has suffered to date among Hispanics have been more than offset by its gains among white voters, who have been trending the party’s way since 1968.
This doesn’t mean the Republican party should ignore Hispanic voters. It shouldn’t ignore any voters, and besides, Hispanics determine the outcome in several Mountain West states and are very important in Florida. But Graham wants Republicans specifically to adopt the Gang of Eight immigration bill that he, Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, and others put forward and which just passed the Senate. They think it’s a cure for what ails Republicans.
Many Republican senators have apparently bought this notion. The bill passed with the support of about a third of the Senate GOP caucus. Nevertheless, the proposition is just not true. The Gang of Eight bill would be a step backward in the party’s quest for political rehabilitation.
To see this, it is necessary to ask: What, after all, is the voters’ problem with the GOP? Their demographic characteristics like religion, skin color, and ethnic background don’t reveal the underlying attitudes that drive their discomfort with the party. Beneath these factors, we find a skepticism of the Republican party that unites many different types of voters, including many who supported the GOP as recently as 2004. Read more from this story HERE.
Congressman: Senate immigration bill unconstitutional
By Stephen Dinan. Rep. Steve Stockman, a Texas Republican, said Friday that the Senate immigration bill is a revenue measure, which makes it unconstitutional because all revenue bills must start in the House.
“Not only is the Senate amnesty bill an abuse of taxpayers and immigrants, it’s utterly unconstitutional,” Mr. Stockman said. “The Senate cannot invent its own amnesty taxes.”
He called on House Speaker John A. Boehner to officially reject the Senate bill as unconstitutional using what’s known in Congress as the “blue slip” process, which is when the House informs the Senate that one of its bills contains taxes or spending and therefore must come from the House. Read more from this story HERE.
Border Patrol agents have ‘serious concerns’ about Senate immigration bill
By Stephen Dinan. The National Border Patrol Council, the union for the agents charged with guarding the U.S.-Mexico border, says it has “serious concerns” about the way the new Senate bill handles security in the southwest — adding a major new critical voice to the immigration debate.
NBPC had held its fire in recent weeks as it worked behind the scenes to try to get the bill amended, but the agents are now speaking out and saying they aren’t sure the Border Patrol can even handle the surge of 20,000 additional agents that was the crux of the deal that helped win over wavering Republicans.
“We chose to work behind the scenes, and it doesn’t seem that the problems were corrected,” Shawn Moran, an at-large vice president for the NBPC, told The Washington Times on Thursday, after the Senate vote. “It seems that political goals took precedence over actual reforms. Unless we’re going to form a human chain from Brownsville to Imperial Beach, I’m not sure this is going to be the cure that everybody thinks it will be at the border.”
With the NBPC expressing concerns, it means that all three unions for the employees at the immigration services — Border Patrol, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — have said the Senate bill doesn’t measure up.
Senators passed their bill Thursday afternoon on a 68-32 vote, with 14 Republicans joining all of the chamber’s Democrats in support. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-29 04:11:312013-06-29 04:11:31The Wrong Fix for the Wrong Problem: The Amnesty Bill Will Only Make Things Worse For the Middle Class—and the GOP.
On Fox News Channel’s Saturday broadcast of “America’s News HQ,” Ann Coulter attacked the immigration legislation and questioned why Republicans, including junior Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, would support such legislation after suggesting otherwise during an election.
“[D]emocrats will get 30 million new voters, 80 percent of which, according to all polls, will be voting for the Democrats,” Coulter said. “Why any Republican would support this — and by the way, it is kind of striking that Republicans including Marco Rubio don’t support such amnesties when they are running for office. Oh, no, somehow it is once they get to Washington, they discover all of the unknown bounties for Republicans and amnesty. But Rubio specifically said a pathway to citizenship is amnesty when he ran against Charlie Crist a couple of years ago.”
Anchor Uma Pemmaraju asked Coulter, the author of “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,” why Democrats were expressing a sense of urgency in getting the bill through the Senate before the Fourth of July break.
“This is the way the Democrats always hoodwink, always snooker the Republicans as they tried to do with gun control,” she said. “‘Oh come on, you have to be with gun control after Newtown. We are trying to help you out, Republicans. Why don’t we schedule the vote for Sunday?’ And the better path has been let’s think about this. Let’s see what is in the thousand-page bill. I mean this is another Obamacare-type bill where people don’t know what is in it. A real immigration bill could be one-page long — enforce E-verify and build a fence. This idea that the fence is some impossible thing — ‘What do you mean, a fence? We don’t understand and it will not work.’ You know, fences have worked all over the world going back hundreds of years.”
The “shoot-themselves-in-the-foot” party is stalking the irresistible “youth voter,” or what purportedly has been learned about this elusive prototype. The College Republican National Committee commissioned surveys of young adults, 18 to 29, and issued a report which advises the party to radically alter not just its media tactics and grassroots outreach to youth, but the Party’s current message on some issues.
Take a guess what those issues are.
Let’s start with Planned Parenthood. Leave this poor beleaguered organization alone, say the youngsters in GOP research. Defunding efforts are too “negative.” This contrasts, of course,with the DNC’s positive, pro-fetus advocacy including taxpayer-funded, late-term, sex-selection abortions…
So what’s the solution? The Republicans need to change their message, even though it wasn’t their message. Essentially, the party must change its principles. They must not speak out and try to limit Planned Parenthood’s evil actions any longer…
Which brings us to homosexuality. Predictably, the researchers found that younger voters are more inclined to see nothing wrong with this behavior, dutifully regurgitating the relentless, inaccurate messaging of “gay” advocates and the liberal media. Opposing same sex marriage is a “deal breaker” for one out of four younger voters, who said they’d never pull the lever for such candidates. So what do the “experts” advise?
On the issue of same sex so-called marriage, the report recommends, “…the party ought to promote the diversity of thought within its ranks and make clear that we welcome healthy debate on the policy topic at hand. We should also strongly oppose the use of anti-gay rhetoric.”
With dozens of Democratic lawmakers struggling to live on a food stamp budget to protest GOP cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a Republican staffer says he is living on a SNAP budget without problems.
Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman’s communications director and agriculture policy advisor, Donny Ferguson, says he has been able to eat well on $27.58 for a week, less than the $31.50 House Democrats have limited themselves to for their “SNAP Challenge.”
“I wanted to personally experience the effects of the proposed cuts to food stamps. I didn’t plan ahead or buy strategically, I just saw the publicity stunt and made a snap decision to drive down the street and try it myself. I put my money where my mouth is, and the proposed food stamp cuts are still quite filling,” Ferguson said of the challenge.
Stockman’s office noted that Ferguson did not use coupons, discount programs, or a shopping list, and he shopped at locations accessible via public transportation.
“Not only did I buy a week’s worth of food on what Democrats claim is too little, I have money left over. Based on my personal experience with SNAP benefit limits we have room to cut about 12 percent more,” Ferguson said.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-20 03:24:202013-06-20 03:24:20GOP Staffer Claims to Live on Food Stamps Without Problems, Suggests Cutting More
A question I’ve been asked a lot lately goes a little something like this:
Beyond the fact it betrays the rule of law and rewards lawbreakers by giving them what they broke the law for in the first place, I don’t understand why all these Republican “leaders” want to engage in a scamnesty program that will just result in adding over $6 trillion more in debt for taxpayers while simultaneously allowing Democrats to register millions of more new voters. Hispanics have voted Republican only 31% of the time since 1980. Do they want the whole country to look as broke as California following the Reagan Amnesty, which was a Republican-leaning state for decades (GOP won California in 7 of the 10 previous presidential elections prior to the Reagan Amnesty) and now less than 30% of Californians are registered Republicans? Are these GOP “leaders” so stupid as to not understand they’re actively aiding and abetting their own destruction?
The answer, of course, is yes – they are this stupid. But the answer doesn’t end there. To truly understand what’s driving the GOP ruling class’ self-immolation train you have to realize why they’re this stupid.
There are two reasons for their stupidity.
The first is easy to identify, because we recognize the ruling class mindset is largely a non-partisan phenomenon. It seems nobody, regardless of party, gets more principled the longer they’re a part of the District of Corruption. The den of iniquity known as the beltway culture is like a rotting corpse that eventually infests everything and everybody it touches. Some have the depth of worldview, character, and courage to resist its side effects longer than others, but prolonged exposure over time eventually leads to even the best of us being infected with a lack of critical thinking, self-righteousness, and ambition masquerading as conviction.
Once infected, the patient then loses detachment from all reality outside of the 202 or 212 area codes. This produces an echo chamber, whereas a bunch of people presume to play God by making decisions with regular people’s lives they themselves haven’t had to live in a long time and no longer understand. From high atop their subsidized Valhalla they issue edicts and commandments they often exempt themselves from. Sure we complain, vent, and when we’re really upset we might even – gasp! – blog about it. Because nothing threatens gangster government like a blog.
However, when they do descend down to the depths to commiserate with we in the huddled masses, which is usually only for fundraisers or campaigning, they are often treated by their bosses (us) like they are rock stars and not our employees, which only feeds their egocentric existence. Instead of holding them accountable for what previous generations of Americans would’ve called treason, we often thank them for not selling us out even more. We then send them right back to the source of their temptation expecting a different result each time.
Wash, rinse, and repeat.
So, yes, the insulated ruling class world these people are allowed to live in (often for decades) feeds their stupidity. But there is something else afoot here that is far more subtle and sinister.
Those that run the Republican Party are ashamed of their base. I say that knowing ashamed is a strong word, yet in this case it might not actually be strong enough. These are often successful and wealthy people. They understand Coke doesn’t make money promoting Pepsi, or that the Yankees shouldn’t take advice on how to build a winner from the Red Sox. They’re not morons. They just hate us.
To them the big argument between Republicans and Democrats isn’t a clash of worldviews with a civilization at stake. To them the big argument is whether the check from the taxpayer trough gets written out to Democrat special interests or theirs. This thing we call politics isn’t faith and ethics in action to these people, but rather a cynical battle of dueling self-interests. Therefore, it’s those of us who attempt to interject our faith and/or ethics into the political process that are the real threat to them—much more so than Democrats.
Democrats don’t threaten their way of life, but we do.
They’re fine arguing with Democrats about issues like job creation, because both of them wrongly believe that’s the government’s job. They fall apart when the conversation changes to what government shouldn’t do, or a culture’s moral responsibility. In other words, we’re often aligned with people who don’t share our value system. That is the recipe for a dysfunctional relationship.
And dysfunctional relationships often end in divorce.
They know the reason Mitt Romney lost in 2012 was the loss of the GOP base, not the Hispanic vote. They know Romney would’ve needed 72% of the Hispanic vote to win. They know these facts are readily available to all who care to research them for themselves. They know they’re lying to you, often using “conservative media” you frequent to do it. They know you’re alienated from the party.
They just don’t care.
See, this is all part of a greater plan, a plan to replace you with voters who want the same thing from government that they want. So they’re going to replace you with voters who believe in entitlement, bending the rules or outright breaking the law to get what they want, and don’t care about the Constitution or the “laws of nature and nature’s God” anymore than they do.
In the meantime they don’t mind losing a few elections if that’s what it takes to preserve their gravy train. Besides, many of these people have been there for decades anyway, so two or three crucial elections are barely a wrinkle in time for them. This explains why they don’t have the sense of urgency about America’s future that we do.
Once they’ve sufficiently watered down your influence within the Republican Party by flooding the electorate with more “government-Americans,” they’ll try and come back and make you part of the team again—but only on their terms, of course.
And their terms are stand for nothing meaningful, believe in nothing meaningful, but vote Republican just because we’re not Democrats. “After all,” they’ll say, “at least we still say ‘God bless America’ at our convention.”
The end game here is control. Always has been. They’re not ideologically driven one way or the other. They are purely agenda driven, and the agenda is control. Stand in the way of them being in control regardless of your ideology – either conservative or libertarian – and you’re a threat. This explains why these people go after us harder in primaries than they go after Democrats in general elections.
What for many years we have wrongly believed to be a battle between moderates and conservatives is really a battle for control. To believe these people have an ideology is giving them too much credit. Their only ideology is control. They want you involved—but on their terms. They want diversity in the party—but on their terms.
These people would rather lose elections than lose control, and that’s why they keep doing over and over again what has proven to be a loser every time it’s tried. That’s why they accept the liberal media’s talking points on the death of the Tea Party or social conservatives at face value. To admit defeat or to admit you’re relevant would be the same as admitting you have power and influence over the process, and the minute they admit that they lose control.
What we have viewed as “a battle for the soul of the Republican Party” is nothing of the sort. These people are soul-less. To them this is simply a clash of two factions within a board of directors for control of a corporation. They simply want control to pay off their investors/shareholders with dividends and/or coveted jobs/appointments. They don’t care what product the company sells or doesn’t sell, provided they’re in control.
The only way to beat these people is to realize this and beat them at their own game. The numbers have always been in our favor, but they have done a magnificent job of buying off several of our so-called leaders and champions, so we couldn’t sufficiently organize to overthrow them.
