Today’s GOP Lives in Reagan’s World
by Byron York

On May 2, Republicans will gather at the Reagan Library in Santa Barbara, Calif., for the first GOP presidential debate of the 2012 campaign. It’s not clear which candidates will be there, but here’s a safe bet: Each will declare himself, or herself, a Reagan Republican.

Such is the hold of Ronald Reagan on the Republican Party that it is simply impossible to imagine a candidate not reaching for the Reagan mantle. And such is the hold of Reagan on our politics as a whole that, on the eve of the State of the Union, President Obama felt compelled to praise Reagan’s leadership and “unique ability to inspire others to greatness.”

Just 15 years ago, Obama condemned what he called the “dirty deeds” of “Reagan and his minions” — not an unusual opinion among Democrats. Now, the political world as a whole is coming to recognize, at least a bit, the greatness in Reagan that Republicans have admired for more than a generation.

One reason for Reagan’s evolving image is that we know much more about him than just a few years ago. “There’s been a stunning change in the view of Reagan since 2000,” says Annelise Anderson, who with her husband, Martin — both former Reagan aides — has done pioneering research in the Reagan archives. “The publication of his radio commentaries, letters from throughout his life, and the minutes of his National Security Council meetings — we see the extent to which he was formulating strategy and defining, directing and pursuing his objectives.”

Reagan was indeed the sunny public presence of memory, but the Andersons’ books — “Reagan: In His Own Hand,” “Reagan: A Life in Letters” and “Reagan’s Secret War”– show how his accomplishments were the result of a lifetime spent studying, thinking, writing and preparing for leadership. The newly released papers show how Reagan mixed his personal qualities — an unmatched determination, desire to learn and optimism — with a deep belief in liberty, free enterprise and American exceptionalism. Together, they formed the foundation for the specific policies — lower taxes, strong defense — that changed the United States and the world.

For today’s Republicans, the problem is that it’s easier to talk about lower taxes and strong defense than it is to guess what Reagan would do were he alive now. What would he do about health care, the deficit, immigration and terrorism? Even his old confidants can’t say for sure.

That uncertainty is one reason we see so much yearning among Republicans for another Reagan. “I’m always asked, ‘When will we see somebody like Reagan again?’” says Peter Hannaford, a longtime Reagan aide and author of “Recollections of Reagan.” “My answer is never. He was sui generis. Someday, you’ll have somebody with some of his qualities and with that bigger-than-life aspect — but not yet.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are very much living in Reagan’s party. For Craig Shirley, the longtime conservative activist and author of “Rendezvous with Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America,” today’s GOP still reflects the man who was elected president more than 30 years ago. Back then, so-called “country-club Republicans” were a powerful force in the party. “All these moderate-to-liberal Republicans considered conservatism the province of Neanderthals,” recalls Shirley, who is a consultant to The Examiner. Now, it’s the moderates who are virtually extinct. The result, Shirley believes, is “a more vigorous debate and a more honest choice for the American people.”

Starting soon, state and county Republican parties will be holding their yearly Lincoln Day dinners, the way Democrats hold Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners. In recent years, many of those GOP events have become Lincoln-Reagan Day dinners, or just Reagan Day dinners. That trend will likely continue as the party seeks an even closer identification with past greatness.

And Republican politicians will continue to seek that elusive mix of attributes that made Reagan Reagan. Perhaps there is another great leader out there right now, and we don’t know it. After all, no one knew what Reagan would accomplish until he moved into the Oval Office.

So on May 2, the GOP candidates — a group that could include Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, John Thune, Mitch Daniels, Sarah Palin and others — will take the stage at the Reagan Library and try to convince Republicans that they are worthy heirs to Ronald Reagan. The audience will undoubtedly be skeptical, but inwardly hoping that at least one of them will be right.

On The GOP’s Message Going Forward
by Hugh Hewitt

None of the candidates who seek this weekend to replace Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican National Committee are household names. Reince Priebus is the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, Saul Anuzis is the forrmer chair of the Michigan GOP, Ann Wagner is a former ambassador of Luxembourg, and Maria Cino is a former senior official in the George W. Bush administration.

Whichever one emerges as chair will almost certainly define their first tasks as the repair devastated morale at the RNC and the rehabilitation of the donor rolls and the party’s operations.

The most important job of the new chair will not be those mundane but crucial tasks, however, but rather to stay away from the spotlight and leave the news cycle over the next nine months to Speaker Boehner and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell. This is especially important over the next two months. The new GOP chair will have the right to remain silent on the budget debate that is about to begin. We have to hope he or she will use it.

This is also the task before every would-be GOP presidential candidate and nearly every GOP senator and representative as well. The crucial agenda for the next nine months is the Congressional agenda, and since the House goes first on matters of budget and since the Republicans have a huge majority there, the necessary discipline that is required from all conservatives in and outside of the Congress is to support the Speaker’s effort to frame the unfolding debate over the size and direction of government.

The House GOP gathers in Baltimore this weekend, and it it will return from there to D.C. next week to vote the repeal of Obamacare and to begin the oversight of the Obama Adminsitration that has been completely lacking for two years. At the top of the latter agenda is the overdue effort to cabin the Environmental Protection Agency before its diktats on cap-and-tax begin to power down the struggling recovery. As the House GOP awaits the president’s budget its most pressing tasks will be these oversight hearings and those hearings will help set the stage for the budget and the big argument over job growth. Each of these hearings will be heavily covered, and responsibility in the execution of the oversight will be a key ingrediant to the success of the effort. Wild charges or fabricated evidence will boomerang, and there is no need for any histrionics as the record of Team Obama is so dismal to begin with. As oversight begins, the task of every Committee and subcommittee chair will be to let the Obama Adminsitration officials talk. And talk. And talk. Pose the right questions –”Exactly where was the stimulus spent?”– and the debate will unfold exactly as it needs to.

After the president’s budget arrives and the State of the Union address is given, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and his colleagues will take the center stage and will have to fashion, announce and defend deep, deep cuts in federal spending. As the howls from the left will be high-pitched and long no matter what is proposed, there is no sense in going half way, and Ryan knows this and is prepared to carve away at the mass of subsidies that has flowed out of D.C. over the past four years of Nancy Pelosi’s rule. The House GOP gets one chance at laying out its budget, and one chance to make the case for the massive downsizing that the international credit markets are waiting for. The difficulty in making this argument is that the Democrats know this will be their best chance to define the debate and with it Speaker Boehner’s agenda, and thus the House GOP leadership has to impress on all of its members this weekend that the dumbest thing any of them says in the next four-to-eight weeks will be grabbed by the Democrats and the allied MSM and used to define the entire GOP and the budget debate. Each House member, in effect, holds the ability to destroy the messaging about the budget debate, and the message in Baltimore ought to be that if any member does so, he or she will be stripped of future position and authority in the caucus.

Although there may be a “selective shutdown” of the federal government ahead as the House GOP and the president fail to come to an agreement on spending, it will not be for the House rank-and-file to declare the inevitability of such a impasse.

There is an elected House GOP leadership, which includes besides Boehner and Ryan, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Jeb Henserling, Pete Sessions, Michelle Bachmann and Tom Price. When the debate over the budget begins in earnest, the plan laid out has to be defended by these voices, and primarily by Cantor and Ryan. The new RNC chair and the would-be GOP presidential nominees have to stand back and back them up, as do the GOP senators and the rest of the House caucus. If any “free agents” show up with any excuse to divert attention from the big debate, the effort to focus and execute the agenda will be compromised.

The president can and will use surrogates to try and blow holes in the GOP’s budget, and the president’s numerous allies in the networks and among the newspapers will provide him every assistance even as they did in the campaign of 2008 and throughout the debate over the stimulus and Obamacare.

These are just givens, just the rules of the road inside the Manhattan-Beltway media elite.

The GOP from top to bottom has to realize that in order to win the argument they have to stay on their message and not be diverted from the key facts and the central proposals in the House GOP budget.

The debate will take many weeks, and even after the Budget Committee and then the full House passes the budget, it will then pass to the Appropriations Committee to live within the caps set, and to the Senate to respond to the House budget.

But the next few weeks will decide whether the public buys into lay the GOP’s arguments over the future. To do that the public must first hear and then understand those arguments.

This requires repititon and more repitition. It especially requires clarity and discipline in the messaging. The Speaker and the senior leadership have to be available to all media and especially to those outlets which have a multiplier effect, and their surrogates have to stay on message as well.

The new GOP chair and the would-be presidential nominees will not vanish from the headlines and they should not go into hiding, but they can and should for a season take their cues from the House GOP budget and support it or remain silent. The very worst thing that could happen would be for some high-profile Republican to seek to grab some media leverage via an opportunistic attack on that budget.

Speaker Boehner has made it clear that the 112th Congress will not be a replay of the rule-of-one that defined the Pelosi years. Hopefully his colleagues will return that respect by allowing him and his lieutenants the chance to propose and pass a budget that returns America to a path of fiscal responsibility.

The Republican Senate
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Republicans gnashed their teeth in frustration as the national tide of GOP resurgence washed up against the massive Democratic fortresses in Nevada, Washington state, Colorado and California. When they neither toppled nor faltered, most conservatives resigned themselves to a divided Congress with the Republican House and the Democratic Senate forever at war.

Not so. The vote on the extension of the Bush tax cuts reveals that the Republican Party has, in fact, gained effective control of the U.S. Senate. We are facing the same situation Ronald Reagan confronted in 1980 when his revolution brought him control of the Senate, but left the House under the nominal reign of Tip O’Neill and the Democrats. But, in fact, as the new president soon discovered, the House Democratic majority was subservient to the tide that had swept the Senate. Terrified by the Republican sweep, the Democrats were unable to muster a coherent opposition in the chamber they controlled. So it will be in 2011.

The Democrats will keep the corner offices in the Russell, Dirksen and Hart Senate office buildings and retain their committee chairmanships, but their ability to summon a majority to sustain their president on crucial votes is gone. The defection of Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut indicates that the 53-47 Democratic tilt of the Senate is more apparent than real.

Webb, Nelson, Manchin and Lieberman are all up for re-election in 2012. Each is very good at reading the handwriting on the wall left by Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., Evan Bayh, D-Ind., Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Bob _Bennett, R-Utah, and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., on their way out the door. It reads, “The conservatives are coming!”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., could well afford to lose four votes while he controlled the Senate 58-42, but he can ill afford four defections when his margin is only three. And Sens. Nelson, Jon Tester, D-Mont., Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. — all from red states and all facing close re-election battles — cannot be far behind these four in considering periodic abandonment of the ship on key votes. Only the likelihood of retirement saves Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., from a similar fate. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Herb Kohl, D-Wis., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., also vulnerable in 2012, probably think they can ride out the tide in their more Democratic states. (And in any event, Brown, Stabenow and Menendez are too liberal to notice what has just happened.)

So, on key votes, the endangered Democratic senators are likely to dodge the bullets coming from the House and defect from Reid’s majority. Why should they take the rap for blocking conservative legislation when they have a presidential veto backing them up at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue? “Let the president take the rap; why should I have to?” they will ask as they lend their assent to House-passed bills. The inability of President Obama to re-elect those who supported him hardly encourages others to risk their careers doing so.

Indeed, Reid can only regain his functioning majority if more Democrats choose to retire rather than face the music in 2012. If Kohl, Bingaman, Webb and Ben Nelson decide to retire after this term, the Democrats could have enough lame ducks to keep control of the Senate floor for one more cycle — hardly a pleasing prospect for their party.

The result of the functional _Republican control of the Senate is that the forum for decision-making in a divided Washington will not be the conference committee, but rather White House negotiations between the two political parties.

It remains to be seen whether the endangered Democrats can save their Senate seats from the likely GOP tide of 2012 by switching in time to pretend to be moderates. What is clear is that they are not going to block the Republican bills coming over from the House.

The Democrats will still control the committees in the Senate, but the Republicans will own the floor.

This Is a Referendum, Not an Election
by Dennis Prager

Next Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 is not Election Day. It is Referendum Day.

It may be commonplace for commentators to announce that every election is “the most important election in our lifetime” or something analogous. But having never said that of a presidential election, let alone an off-year election, this commentator cannot be accused of crying wolf when I say that this off-year election is not simply the most important of my lifetime. It is the most important since the Civil War.

The reason is that unlike all previous elections, this one is actually a referendum on the direction of the United States of America.

If the Democrats win:

– The American people have announced, consciously or not, that they support the Democratic Party’s “fundamental transformation” — those were President Obama’s words when he campaigned, and he has lived up to them — of America from a liberty-based state of limited government into an equality-based welfare state with an ever-expanding government.

– America will change from a country that emphasizes producing wealth to a country that emphasizes redistribution of wealth.

The left has never been primarily interested in creating wealth. Its primary goal always and everywhere has been to redistribute it. That so many businessmen and much of Wall Street are only now awakening to this fact is only a testament to the staggering lack of wisdom in big business.

– America will produce increasingly narcissistic citizens.

For proof, just look at the virtual shutdown of much of France and the ubiquitous rioting of vast numbers of its citizens over a tiny change in its welfare state — raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62. The idea that one will work two more years before receiving benefits until death so offends vast numbers of French — including young people who have every reason to believe they will live until the age of 100 — that they are fighting it as if their very lives were in jeopardy. That is the self-centeredness that all welfare states engender in their citizens.

– America will further reinforce the conviction that minorities are victims — who must be protected from their fellow Americans by the state.

Latinos, blacks, Muslims, gays and vast numbers of women have been told by the left and its political party that they are all persecuted by a country that is SIXHIRB — Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist and Bigoted. That America is the least SIXHIRB country in the world is a fact that has been all but drowned out by the left-wing domination of television and print news media, all the entertainment media, and the high schools and universities.

– America will continue to undermine its unique ability to Americanize people of all ethnic, national, racial, and religious backgrounds.

With a Democratic victory the country’s very motto — E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many One” — will continue to erode as ethnic and racial identities rather one American identity are increasingly celebrated. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has just announced that Germany’s experiment with multiculturalism has “utterly failed,” but the left and its political party, the Democrats, have redoubled their efforts to supplant E Pluribus Unum with multiculturalism.

– America will continue its economic slide.

With a Democratic victory, unsustainable debts will mount, wealth-producing companies will continue to flee from higher taxes and more regulations, energy use will be taxed in the name of environmentalist utopianism, and the government will continue to print dollars.

– America will become increasingly secular.

With a Democratic victory, the left’s goal of rendering America’s other motto, “In God We Trust,” an anachronism will come closer to fruition. Leftism is a jealous god. As in Western Europe, the Judeo-Christian roots of this country are ceasing to play the indispensible moral role they have played since before 1776.

And what would constitute a Democrat victory next Tuesday? Anything other than a Republican landslide. Any other result will be interpreted by the media and by the Democrats as solely a result of the economic recession and as the normal losses of the dominant party in off-year elections.

In other words, the only way to ensure that the electoral results are seen as a repudiation of the growth of the state and the other Democrat and leftist goals is through an enormous Republican victory.

Only then will America understand that this election was not first about jobs. It was above all about America.

Republican Trend Continues
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The mainstream media is peddling the line that the Democrats are staging a comeback, slicing Republican leads. It is absolute nonsense. A close review of polling in every close House race in the nation indicates that Republicans now lead in 53 seats currently held by Democrats and are within five points in 20 more.

And the trend is Republican, not Democrat. Of the races where comparative data over the past few weeks is available, Republicans have gained in 33 while Democrats have gained in only 10.

On the Senate level, Republicans now lead in all ten states that are necessary for GOP control of the Senate, the smallest margin coming in Nevada where the Rasmussen Poll has the Republican, Sharron Angle, four points ahead. In West Virginia, Wisconsin, Washington State, and Illinois, the Republican has surged ahead dramatically in recent days and only in Colorado and California has there been slippage. The ten states which are now represented by Democrats where Republicans have the lead are:

North Dakota = +45

Indiana = +18

Arkansas = +18

Wisconsin = +12

Pennsylvania = + 7

West Virginia = + 6

Colorado = + 5

Washington State = + 5

Illinois = + 4

Nevada = + 4

Republican gains should be even greater than this polling indicates. The trend lines are decidedly in the GOP’s favor and Gallup Poll indicates that Republicans are twice as likely to be enthusiastic about voting as Democrats are.

The only note of caution for Republicans is that their leads in Democratic House seats are not substantial. In only 14 seats does the Republican candidate lead by more than ten points and most of those are open Democratic seats. But the Republican turnout machine – animated by Tea Party activists — will likely outperform its Democratic rivals.

And the Democratic Party has no message. Its campaigns are a hodgepodge of personal negatives and fabricated issues. No Democratic candidate is even trying to defend Obama’s health care legislation or argue that his stimulus program is working. Cap and trade is never mentioned by Democrats on the campaign trail. We have the spectacle of the most substantive legislative program in generations having been passed by Congress and now finding that it has no defenders in the election campaign, only Democrats scurrying to prove their independence.

All signs point to a growing Republican landslide.

The gigantic Republican gains of the past week indicate that party trend is now beginning to kick in big time. The Republican leads until this past week are largely due to the voting decisions of people who closely follow the process. The surge in Republican support in the past seven to ten days indicates that the less educated voters who do not follow politics as closely are breaking for the Republicans. Normally, these downscale voters are Democrats, but the economy and the alienating values of the Obama Administration (e.g. Ground Zero Mosque) seem to be driving them to the GOP.

Also boosting Republican prospects is the absence of social issues in the national debate. These elections are turning on unemployment, deficits, the economy, health care, and the national debt, not on gay rights or abortion. So, social liberals and libertarians see no reason not to vote Republican. Only in California are these traditional issues working in driving voters to the Democrats.

A landslide without precedent appears to be in the making.

The Myth of Conservative Vulnerability
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

This week’s primary victories of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe DioGuardi in New York illustrate how the tea party is cleansing the Republican Party and installing true believers over professional politicians. It is a healthy trend that will continue to recreate the Party of Reagan.

But the conventional media, instead of hailing this trend, warns that conservatives cannot be elected and bemoans the victory of true believers saying that it is equivalent to handing seats to the Democrats and the liberals. This reasoning, which made sense in other times, is badly flawed in today’s political climate.

When social issues like abortion, gays and guns dominate the political discourse, moderates have a big advantage. Voters in these times tend to measure themselves on a left to right spectrum and find those flanked sharply to their right to be extremist on these issues and reject their candidacies.

But these days, social issues are in remission and economic/fiscal problems have, understandably, taken center stage. In this environment, purists of the right have a big advantage because nobody doubts the sincerity with which they embrace the goals of limited government, low taxes and reduced spending. Politicians of all stripes — including most Democrats — vow allegiance to them, as does the overwhelming majority of the electorate.

In this environment, the distinctions of left and right give way to the difference between sincerity and insincerity, leaving the voters to judge. With candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada or O’Donnell in Delaware or DioGuardia in New York, voters don’t have to guess. They know real conservatives when they see them.

Of course, Rep. Mike Castle had a big advantage in the Delaware Senate contest because of his name recognition and voter support after having run successfully statewide more than a dozen times (congressmen in Delaware serve at large). But don’t count O’Donnell out. She is the real thing — a conservative small-government devotee whose advocacy of low taxes is sincere and heartfelt. The national Republican establishment was stupid and short-sighted in the negatives they threw at her during the primary. Now they will have to eat their words at great financial and political cost.

But, in a way, their obduracy gives O’Donnell a great opportunity to run as the anti-establishment candidate, putting a plague on the houses of both parties and calling attention to the corruption of each. By separating herself from the Washington Republicans, she is able to embrace the values of small government and low taxes without doubt about the depth of her commitment. She is free of party labels and can luxuriate in that liberty.

For his part, DioGuardi has a very good chance to defeat Kristin Gillibrand. The appointed Democratic senator has not used the primary period, when she had a monopoly of the airwaves, to solidify her incumbency and generate familiarity among voters. Now she opens the general election likely at or even below 50 percent of the vote.

DioGuardi has a great chance to close the gap between them if he can get enough funding. Republicans looking for a lock on the Senate should send him plenty of funding. The Republicans running in Wisconsin, California, Illinois and West Virginia are largely self-funded. It should be possible to concentrate resources on those states where the need is the greatest, and if the GOP is smart, Delaware and New York will be high on the list.

9/12 Reveals GOP Intensity for November Elections
by Jillian Bandes

The tea party has something in common with fine wine: it gets better with age. This year’s 9/12 rally came replete with the types of moveable signs that were clearly crafted with care and the types of activists who are quick on their feet with chants and chatter. It was all sponsored in large part by FreedomWorks, a non-profit organization that fights for limited government, and serves as a central force for a strictly volunteer tea-party army.

“There is only one power on this earth big enough to destroy this country,” said FreedomWorks chairman and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, during the Capitol rally. “That is government. Our founding fathers knew that and feared that. That’s why they wrote the Constitution.”

The turnout at Sunday’s 9/12 march was smaller than the number of people who had attended last year’s blockbuster 9/12 rally, possibly due to the fact that Glenn Beck had sucked up the energy of some tea partiers at his 8/28 “Restoring Honor” rally two weeks ago. Also affecting turnout was the weather: a steady drizzle dampened the event from the start of the day until about an hour before it ended. Considering those two factors, the turnout was indeed impressive, according to Freedomworks president Matt Kibbe.

“Is there anyone here who is going to let the rain dampen their plans to take their country back? Is there anyone here who is going to let the rain dampen their plans to remember in November?” he asked. The questions were met with a resounding “no” from the crowd.

The 9/12 march began at the Washington Monument, with a non-denominational religious service starting at 10am, and then a line-up of speakers from local activists groups. Then, the attendees swarmed down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Hill and set up camp in front of Congress, where they stayed until 5pm.

The kitsch factor was high. A sign-making event put on by FreedomWorks on Saturday resulted in the kind of elaborate displays that have come to symbolize the creativity and energy of tea party activists, including 3-d representations of tar and feathers, and a sign that featured President Obama’s moveable mouth.

The march was also highly politicized, with a theme of “Remember November,” in reference to the upcoming mid-term elections. Most speakers stuck to that theme on podiums in front of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, and the crowd seemed to have it on repeat. Armey referenced the importance of the elections by pointing to the many primary elections that the tea party has influenced, such as Joe Miller in Alaska.

Mike Pence, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, was a keynote speaker at the Capitol, and was met with chants from the crowd: “Sign the contract!” The crowd was ostensibly referring to the GOP’s “Young Guns” platform, put out by Reps. Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, who consider themselves the vanguards of constitutional conservatism. Pence has reportedly been “shut out” of the contract, which is set to be released in bookstores on Tuesday.

Despite the hullaballoo, Pence hit hard with an small-government, anti-incumbency message. He himself is a third-term incumbent, but has worked hard at maintaining an outsider image.

“We do not consent to runaway federal spending by either party. We demand an end to the spending once and for all,” said Pence. “We must fight for what has always been the source of American greatness: God and freedom.”

Many of the attendees said similar things to the speakers that manned the podiums.

“The government is heading in the wrong direction, since President Obama we’ve gone much further into debt, and our spending is out of control,” said Joe McKeney, from Farmville, North Carolina. “I believe it has to do with the liberal attitude in Congress. We need to get back to a smaller government, with fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget.”

Another attendee, a father of six children and grandfather of nine, said he came for his family.

“I’m sick and tired of the way the government has been running…. The government is supposed to be for the people, and instead, its all politicians doing whatever they damn well please. And it just isn’t right,” he said.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people that are like me, that are conservative, that want less government, that are just peaceful, passive people, that have allowed the Dems and liberals, Member by Member to eat away at our liberties, our freedoms,” he said. “The constitution is not a flexible document. It was never intended to be interpreted as a work in progress or a flexible document.”

The GOP’s Need for Speed
by Hugh Hewitt

Mike Pence gets it.

In an interview with CNBC –picked up by The Hill– the House GOP’s number three gave the explicit assurance that a return to the majority for Republicans would mean an extension of the tax cuts.

“Well, we’re going to stay focused on Election Day. But I think before that, we’re going to continue to demand that this administration and this Congress make it clear that no American will see a tax increase in January of next year,” The Hill quotes Pence as saying on the business network.

“So the first thing that we will do is try to preserve the tax relief of 2001 and 2003 for all Americans — for all small businesses and family farmers. But we also want to look at the kind of across the board tax relief, the kind of tax relief that will encourage capital formation, to get this economy moving again,” he added.

This is a great start and more needs to come. In an interview with me on my Monday program –the transcript is here– Republican Leader and presumptive Speaker if the GOP regains the majority John Boehner demurred when I pressed him on the GOP’s need for speed. Boehner obviously recognizes that he cannot speak for a majority that doesn’t exist or for members who haven’t yet been elected or given him their votes as speaker.

An appropriate refusal to be presumptuous, however, has to yield to the suspicion in the country that all Beltway electeds are part of a club and that the club really doesn’t feel the country’s pain and fear. The standard legislative schedule cannot control when a new Congress returns to D.C. in 2011. The House especially, the “People’s Chamber,” cannot slip into the old calendar where budget resolutions emerge in April and appropriations bills in September at the earliest. Boehner has to rally his leadership and his troops in November and December and begin the new year with a raft of legislation that atckles the big stuff and proposes serious solutions. The country is ready for that. Not producing it, at least through a House where a majority exists, will be a huge and lasting error.

Pence’s comments to CNBC are a good sign that some inside the caucus know that there is an overriding “need for speed.” Once and future Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier on my program has also pledged immediate action to rescind the move to add 18,000 IRS agents, which is a good goal example of the specificity that the voters are demanding, but about one line on a two hundred line agenda that needs to be laid out.

Paul Ryan is a superstar because he has laid out a plan. The GOP will keep any new majority they gain only if they collectively embrace a plan that genuinely carves back the spending, extends the tax cuts and keeps the Department of Defense fully funded. Obamacare has to be defunded, and a reform of Social Security advanced asap. Republicans have historically waiting until a consensus emerges, but they cannot do so this time or they will waste their opportunity and squander their momentum.

Hopefully John Boehner has a transition team working in some quiet office building in northern Virginia, ready to ship a detailed schedule and very detailed proposals to the members of the caucus on November 3. Those plans will leak and the lame duck session will be awash in recriminations and denunciations, false charges and alarmism.

Fine. If the GOP gets the rarest of all things in politics, a second chance, they have to expect that plans for using it will bring many squeals of false pain and feigned outrage. The Democrats will demand meetings of the sort they did not hold and bipartisanship of the sort they refused on health care and the stimulus. The MSM will amplify every charge.

If we don’t hear Democratic/MSM outrage coming out of D.C. in November and December as Nancy Pelosi prepares to give over the gavel, the country will be in a very bad place indeed.

And the GOP will have fumbled away a once-in-a-generation opportunity to set the country back on a right course.

How Republicans Will Win the Senate
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

It gets tiresome hearing the conventional wisdom say that the Democrats will likely keep control of the Senate. Far from it.

To gain control, Republicans must win 10 new seats. An analysis of the latest polling data suggests that Republicans currently hold the lead in eight pick-up states: Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington state, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota and Indiana. In a ninth, Illinois, the candidates are tied, and in the 10th — Nevada — Harry Reid is ahead by only one point. And, for insurance, Barbara Boxer in California and Kirsten Gillibrand in New York are both below 50 percent of the vote. In Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal is only at 50 percent. That’s a potential pickup of 13 seats and a likely gain of at least 10 (enough for a majority).

Any incumbent who is running at less than 50 percent of the vote is in serious trouble. It means that a majority of the voters have decided not to vote for him or her. (Asked if you are likely to be married to the same person next year, a vote of “undecided” does not bode well for your marriage.)

So here are the numbers:

Aug. 27 polls

Nevada: Reid (D) 45, Sharon Angle (R) 44 (Mason Dixon)

With Reid this far under 50 percent, Angle is likely to win

Aug. 26 polls

Florida (currently Republican): Marco Rubio (R) 40, Charlie Crist (I) 30, Kendrick Meek (D) 21 (Rasmussen)

So much for Crist!

Pennsylvania: Pat Toomey 40 (R), Joe Sestak (D) 31 (Franklin-Marshall)

Aug. 25 polls

Colorado: Ken Buck (R) 49, Michael Bennet (D): 40 (Reuters)

California: Boxer (D) 49, Carly Fiorina (R) 44 (Rasmussen) Boxer has gained a bit, but still in trouble

Louisiana (currently Republican): David Vitter (R) 51m Charlie Melancon (D) 41 (PPP)

Wisconsin: Ron Johnson (R) 47, Russ Feingold (D) 46 (Rasmussen)

Illinois: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 45, Mark Kirk (R) 45 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 24 polls

Missouri (currently Republican): Roy Blunt 54, Robin Carnahan 41 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 21 polls

Washington state: Dino Rossi (R) 52, Patty Murray (D) 45 (SurveyUSA)

Aug. 20 polls

Arkansas: John Boozeman (R) 65, Blanche Lincoln (D) 27 (Rasmussen) This is not a typo!

The most likely results are that Republicans win the eight seats in which they now lead and also take Illinois and Nevada for a gain of 10 seats and control. They also have a good shot in California and possible upsets in New York and Connecticut.

The Year of the GOP Women
by Hugh Hewitt

Analysts across the MSM are still trying to figure out how the GOP comes up not just with Meg Whitman and from a so-called “progressive state” like California, but also Nikki Haley in South Carolina, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Susana Martinez in New Mexico and Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire.

Three of these women are seeking the top jobs in their state –Whitman, Martinez and Haley– while the other three –Fiorina, Angle and Ayotte– want to join the U.S. Senate.

All six mark a sharp break with Republican Party politics of the past.

There have always been high profile Republican women, dating back to 1938, when Gladys Pyle won a special election in South Dakota to become the first GOP woman to be elected to the U.S. (Margaret Chase Smith, whom many wrongly believe was the first elected woman GOPer, won a general election in 1948. Democrat Hattie Wyatt Caraway was the first woman elected to the Senate, in 1932.)

Sarah Palin is of course the highest profile Republican woman of the moment, though if Meg Whitman succeeds in her quest to become the governor of California, she will quickly become as significant in the life of the GOP as Palin.

Palin’s endorsement helped Fiorina and Haley breakout from the packs in their races, and Palin’s “mama grizzlies” movement is a powerful fund-raising tool among the conservative grass roots. The GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee’s example of good natured give-and-get-without-flinching on the stump and the trail has set an inspiring example for scores of female conservatives across the country.

There is no sign yet, however, that MSM wants to draw attention to this unique year of the GOP woman. In 1992, when four Democratic women won their high profile races, the lefties in the nation’s newsrooms couldn’t stop proclaiming the sea change under way in the Democratic Party. Now that the GOP is having its banner year of gender breakthroughs, the story is getting nearly as much play.

Part of the reason –the obvious part– is that MSM remains overwhelmingly populated by liberal boosters of the Democrats, and they are never in a hurry to write a script that helps Republicans.

But less obvious is the media’s indifference to the story as a consequence of the enormous hostility found among the media elite to Sarah Palin, who is to them a sort of continuing nightmare in newsrooms across the land. The Manhattan-Beltway media and political elites have never figured out Palin, and they are even more confounded that she continues to draw enormous crowds and sway important races. That Palin is playing an important role in the careers of other women politicians is upsetting to these elites. They have yet to grasp the fact that Governor Palin is immensely popular because of her beliefs, ideals and accomplishments. That popularity isn’t going to decline no matter how often she is insulted on MSNBC or by late night comics.

Palin, unlike many of the analysts and insiders who dismiss her, is a growing force on the American political stage, part of a vast restructuring of American politics occurring before our eyes.

There is a rolling earthquake shaking and remaking American politics. It began as a rejection of Barack Obama’s enormous lurch to the left, but it has gone far beyond that. One consequence is this new cohort of new women, and among November’s biggest headlines will be their collective success.

Defining the conservative versus liberal divide
by Star Parker

Now that President Obama is getting ready to make his second Supreme Court nomination, the usual banter is taking place about the court and judicial philosophy.

The Supreme Court, of course, profoundly influences the character of our country.

Although, for instance, many look back on the policies of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal programs as the beginning of the real growth of the American welfare state, it is really key Supreme Court decisions during that time that enabled all of this. Court decisions changing the interpretation of “general welfare”, interstate commerce, and the authority of the federal government to tax changed the game and opened a new era of big government.

At the beginning of the 1930’s, the federal government’s take of national GDP was a little over ten percent. By the mid-1940’s it was over twenty percent, and the trend has been only upward since.

Although much of the discussion about judicial philosophy contrasts how conservative and liberal judges relate to the constitution, I think the real key to conservative and liberal divergence is the world view these judges already have when they sit down to interpret the constitution.

The statement of vision defining American values appears in the Declaration of Independence. Understanding that vision is where I think the most fundamental conservative versus liberal divide exists.

Consider how President Obama relates to the Constitution, as he wrote in his book The Audacity of Hope – “Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth….”

Our president is a moral relativist. So we may expect that he doesn’t take very seriously the idea, as state in the Declaration of Independence, that there are absolutes. That we have God given rights that precede government and that the job of government is to secure them.

Rather than seeing government’s job as securing our rights, the liberal sees it to invent them. The politician – or the empathetic judge – defines what is moral and just.

There’s a lot of speculation about what is driving the tea party movement and why, as reflected in the latest survey by the Pew Research Foundation, Americans’ trust in government is at an all time low.

I think most fundamentally it’s discomfort with this moral relativism that is driving the pervasive unrest.

The whole unique idea of American government – the idea of human liberty – was that there are absolute truths and that individual citizens can and must be protected from arbitrary rulers – whether it is a king or a political class with arbitrary powers.

President Obama said the other day regarding the kind of court nominee he will seek, “…I want somebody who is going to be interpreting our Constitution in a way that takes into account individual rights…”

What in the world can this possibly mean from our president who has just signed into law a health care bill which will force every single American citizen to buy a government defined health care insurance policy? A health care bill that opens the door to unprecedented government control over how private individuals manage their health care and the most private decisions they make over their own lives.

Or what can it possibly mean coming from our president who opposed the Supreme Court’s decision a few years ago banning partial birth abortion – which is pure and simple torture and murder of a live infant?

The real differences over liberal and conservative judges is most fundamentally about the world in which Americans will live. Whether we live and will live in a nation in which there are absolute truths or one in which we are at the hands of political arbitrariness in which our lives and property are up for grabs.

Our country is being governed today by those with the latter view of the world and, fortunately, more and more Americans are deeply concerned.

Saturday Night Beck [Bill Bennett]

There’s a lot to say about CPAC. This morning the major papers are highlighting Glenn Beck’s speech. I like Glenn a lot and I think he has something to teach us. But not what he offered last night.

Analogizing his own struggles with alcohol to the problems of our polity and in our politics, he said, “Hello, my name is the Republican party, and I have a problem!” “I’m addicted to spending and big government.” ”It is still morning in America.” ”It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America. And it’s shaping up to be kind of a nasty day. But it is still morning in America.” And, again, “I believe in redemption, but the first step to getting redemption is you’ve got to admit that you’ve got a problem. I have not heard people in the Republican party yet admit that they have a problem.”

Glenn is among the best talkers in the business of broadcast. I am not sure he’s a very good listener.

First, there is a good and strong tradition in alcohol and drug treatment that personal failings should not be extrapolated into the public sphere; that too often when this is done, conclusions are reached based on the wrong motives and, often, the wrong analysis. Glenn has made that mistake here and taken to our politics a cosmologizing of his own deficiencies. This is not a baseless criticism; they are his own deficiencies that he keeps publicly redounding to and analogizing to. It is wrong and he is wrong.

Second, for him to continue to say that he does not hear the Republican party admit its failings or problems is to ignore some of the loudest and brightest lights in the party. From Jim DeMint to Tom Coburn to Mike Pence to Paul Ryan, any number of Republicans have admitted the excesses of the party and done constructive and serious work to correct them and find and promote solutions. Even John McCain has said again and again that “the Republican party lost its way.” These leaders, and many others, have been offering real proposals, not ill-informed muttering diatribes that can’t distinguish between conservative and liberal, free enterprise and controlled markets, or night and day. Does Glenn truly believe there is no difference between a Tom Coburn, for example, and a Harry Reid or a Charles Schumer or a Barbara Boxer? Between a Paul Ryan or Michele Bachmann and a Nancy Pelosi or Barney Frank?

Third, to admit it is still “morning in America” but a “vomiting for four hours” kind of morning is to diminish, discourage, and disparage all the work of the conservative, Republican, and independent resistance of the past year. The Tea Partiers know better than this. I don’t think they would describe their rallies and resistance as a bilious purging but, rather, as a very positive democratic reaction aimed at correcting the wrongs of the current political leadership. The mainstream media may describe their reactions as an unhealthy expurgation. I do not.

A year ago, we were told the Republican party and the conservative movement were moribund. Today they are ascendant, and it is the left and the Democratic party that are on defense — even while they are in control. That’s quite an amazing achievement. But anyone who knows the history of this country and its political movements should not be surprised. America has a long tradition of antibodies that kick in. From Carter we got Reagan. And from Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama we took back a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, with midterm elections on the horizon that Republicans and conservatives are actually excited about, not afraid of.

To say the GOP and the Democrats are no different, to say the GOP needs to hit a recovery-program-type bottom and hang its head in remorse, is to delay our own country’s recovery from the problems the Democratic left is inflicting. The stakes are too important to go through that kind of exercise, which will ultimately go nowhere anyway — because it’s already happened.

The first task of a serious political analyst is to see things as they are. There is a difference between morning and night. There is a difference between drunk and sober. And there is a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. To ignore these differences, or propagate the myth that they don’t exist, is not only discouraging, it is dangerous.

— Bill Bennett is the host of Morning in America, the Washington Fellow of the Claremont Institute, and the author of A Century Turns: New Hopes, New Fears.

httpvp://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6EAD3188313F4813

Tea Party-Bashers Gone Wild
by Michelle Malkin

The activist Left can’t stand competition. Last week in Long Island, N.Y., opponents of the Democrats’ government health care takeover legislation outnumbered Obama supporters 10 to one. The Tea Party activists toted American flags and signs that read “WE CAN’T AFFORD FREE HEALTH CARE” — prompting one foe to stalk into the peaceful crowd, gesticulate wildly and shout unintelligible threats at the top of his lungs.

The same Democrat Masters of Astroturf who encouraged their followers to use “in-your-face” tactics during the campaign season now balk at vocal opposition from their fiscally conservative neighbors and co-workers. Obama’s architects of Kabuki town halls have packed public forums with partisan plants. Now they accuse opponents gathering at impromptu rallies against the massive health care takeover legislation (which no one has read) of orchestrating “manufactured anger.”

Unaccustomed to pushback, the wealthy, astroturfed ground troops for Obamacare — underwritten by unions, liberal philanthropists, the AARP, ACORN and your tax dollars — have resorted to projection. As I’ve reported previously, the single-payer lobby boasts a $40 million budget and a stable of seasoned political operatives based at 1825 K Street in Washington, D.C. Now that cabal is accusing the broad coalition of taxpayer activists, libertarians, independents, talk radio loyalists, bloggers and first-time protesters against socialized medicine of being, yes, wealthy and astroturfed.

In a comical missive issued Tuesday afternoon, Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse complained: “The Republicans and their allied groups — desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill — are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right-wing extremists funded by K Street Lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country.”

The DNC definition of “thoughtful:” Sitting silent about the lack of transparency, deliberation, truth in numbers and reciprocity on the Obamacare plan. The DNC definition of incitement: Asking out loud, “How can you manage health care when you can’t manage Cash for Clunkers?”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, apparently oblivious to the dozens of well-dressed and well-heeled former lobbyists and influence peddlers employed by his own boss, derided health care town hall protesters as the “Brooks Brothers brigade.” Brooks Brothers was also the president’s clothes designer of choice on Inauguration Day. He taunted: “I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the AstroTurf nature of so-called grass-roots lobbying.” Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dispatched a memo obtained by D.C.-based newspaper Human Events assuring Democrats of “close coordination” with faux grass-roots groups “including but not limited to HCAN, Families USA, AFSCME, SEIU, AARP, etc.”

But never mind all that.

Some panicked congressional targets of the Tea Party movement have responded by shutting their offices, closing their blinds and shooing pesky constituents off public property. The White House health czar’s office is mustering up Internet snitches to report “inaccurate” blog posts and “casual conversations” from health care opponents. And liberal bloggers and cable yakkers are waging their own war on the Tea Party movement by redefining participatory democracy as “thuggery” and “hooliganism.”

Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall bemoaned a fiscal conservative activist’s memo offering advice on how to “pack the hall … spread out” and challenge a politician early “to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda.” Horrors! “This amounts to a sort of civic vigilanteism,” Marshall fretted.

No, showing up at a congressional town hall and booing a talking points-programmed political hack isn’t “civic vigilantism.” Throwing rocks, pouring cement on train tracks, blocking military shipments, smashing windows, hurling paint, slashing tires, vandalizing businesses and throwing shoes are vigilante acts.

That is what the anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-Bush mobsters did over the last eight years — and there wasn’t a peep about those brute tactics from Obama’s blogging pals.

They sat quietly while Code Pink disrupted hearings on the Hill and harassed Marine recruiters.

They looked the other way when ACORN illegally broke into homes and stormed foreclosure auctions.

They gave their tacit approval to self-declared “bank terrorists” like Boston housing entitlement organizer Bruce Marks, who shows up at the schools of bank executives’ children and bullies them because of their parents’ employment in the name of social justice.

Now, the taxpayers footing the bill for Obama’s redistribution of health and wealth are silent no more — and the unhinged Left is beside itself. The “thoughtful” left-wing response to the Tea Party counterinsurgency can best be summed up by hysterical Hollywood actress Janeane Garafolo, who railed last week: “F**ng redneck d**chebaggery. Unmitigated d**chebaggery.”

It’s not the town halls that have gone wild. It’s the Tea Party-bashers who can’t tolerate peaceful, open dissent.

Know thy enemy: This is not your mother’s Democratic Party
By Andrew Breitbart

The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Democrats invest – with taxpayer money, mind you – in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the “education system” have done the rest, making “D” the default choice on Election Day.

Democrats brazenly take policy positions – think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants – not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it.

Democrats long ago jettisoned America’s melting-pot ideal – E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) – because it imperils their campaign for permanent rule. Splitting the country into separate identity groups and playing them against each other works a lot better. And anyone who disagrees is a racist.

Win. Win. Win.

One of the first things President Obama attempted to do after taking office was to take control of the Census Bureau, an act that could redraw congressional districts and ensure Democratic majorities for years to come. The new president also etched out an enemies list, focusing on conservative talk-radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh. He also appears to have singled out Fox News. Comedians and mainstream journalists who are usually contemptuous of government bullying and First Amendment threats also continue to do the president’s bidding.

These overt political gestures were done amid economic chaos and mainstream media delirium to ensure permanent victory for a newly radicalized Democratic Party. Moveon.org, George Soros and the ghost of Saul Alinsky are in charge now. It’s not just “tea party” protesters who think we’ve tilted far left. Self-avowed anarchists and open socialists proudly brandished Obama placards at well-attended May Day parades.

When elected, the Democrats dole out billion-dollar bonuses to their core supporters at taxpayers’ expense. Witness the $787 billion stimulus package, an orgy of special-interest payback for labor unions, liberal activist groups and multinational corporations. One would be hard pressed to name a Democratic policy that is motivated more by principle than by winning.

Where is the media to expose this blatant corruption when the media are in the middle of the pile? NBC News, whose parent company General Electric is getting billions in stimulus cash to perpetuate Democrat-friendly “green” technologies and health care information systems, is at the forefront of a bizarre campaign to act as a check on the party that is out of power, not the party in power. NBC anchor Brian Williams bowed to the new president; MSNBC is a Fellini-esque exercise in liberal triumphalism.

With Democrats holding comfortable majorities in the House and Senate, as well as controlling the executive branch, it’s only logical that the mainstream media to focus their scrutiny on Mr. Limbaugh, ex-Rep. Tom DeLay, former President George W. Bush and Sarah Palin, the governor of one of the least populous states. Right?

NBC News and MSNBC are certainly not alone among the government watchdogs that have been tamed. The New York Times expends its considerable yet waning clout to ensure that our future is in a one-party state. Vocal, liberal Hollywood celebrities – on the same page as the Huffington Post and Keith Olbermann – spread the venom by making membership in the Grand Old Party seem like an anti-social act for young voters.

Such brazenly reprehensible Democratic lawmakers as Nancy Pelosi, John P. Murtha, Barney Frank, Harry Reid and Christopher J. Dodd are not trotted before the media because of their telegenic appeal and oratorical skills, but to act as symbols of what politicians can get away with it. It’s a big-league taunt – like gang members in prison sporting “tear” tattoos under their eyes to brag about their kill count. Yeah … What are you going to do about it, Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell?

Yet Democrats at least wield a logical and workable strategy to defeat their enemy. And “enemy” is precisely how they view the Republican Party.

Republicans, on the other hand, act like a snobby condo board and appear to seek out potential voters for their savoriness. The party expects pre-existing respectable organizations, Protestant churches in particular, to do the heavy lifting. In this day of dwindling Republican appeal, the party’s ace in the hole is heard at the end of the polling day: “Have they counted the overseas military vote yet?” It’s amazing Republicans ever win.

Most disturbing, Republicans seem to think Democrats can be their friends. Not only does the Republican Party not have a Ronald Reagan, the Democratic Party has no Tip O’Neill. Washington doesn’t have end-of-the-day, cross-party social sessions over single-malt scotches. There is no bipartisanship that doesn’t end in Republicans acquiescing in defeat of their core principles. A coordinated Democratic campaign against mainstream middle-of-the-road Republicanism is here to stay. And our strategy, as best as I can decipher it, is to be more liked than the last go around.

In the next election cycle, things need to be drastically different. Democracy is not Augusta National Golf Club. It’s a messy free-for-all, and in a two-party system, the GOP will not survive if it doesn’t accept the fact that the Democrats are its enemy and that it must begin to play for keeps. That means finding another Lee Atwater – only meaner – and not apologizing when we get him.

Obama’s Propaganda Campaign to Mainstream Extreme Liberalism
by David Limbaugh

A fellow conservative I highly respect told me last week that he doesn’t see how Republicans can ever regain the majority without reaching out to moderates, because, he said, only 30 percent of Americans are conservative. Let me try to clear up this growing misconception.

The issue is quite timely, considering that GOP-defecting Sen. Arlen Specter is rationalizing his self-serving move as necessitated by an increasingly intransigent conservatism in the Republican Party. He echoes the David Frum Republicans that the party is too conservative, backward-looking, stale and out of fresh ideas.

It’s true that a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that only 21 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans, compared with 35 percent as Democrats and 38 percent as independents. But there’s a huge difference between party identification and ideological identification.

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, as recently as Aug. 20, 2008, revealed that 60 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservative and only 36 percent as liberal.

So it’s the Republican Party that’s in trouble, not conservatism. The GOP’s shrinkage can’t be because it’s too conservative. George W. Bush, our most recent Republican president, was hardly an extreme conservative. His most outspoken critics today include wide swaths of conservatives who decried his failure to rein in federal spending and control illegal immigration, among other things.

And the GOP’s 2008 presidential candidate, John McCain, was hardly a staunch conservative, either, lest he would never have been the liberal media’s favorite Republican. McCain didn’t lose because of any extreme conservatism. Nor did Obama win because he was honest about his liberalism, which he denied every time he was confronted about it.

Even though the nation is mostly conservative and “liberal” is still a dirty word, President Obama is moving us leftward at a breakneck pace by disguising his actions through smooth rhetoric and slick salesmanship. Obama is a consummate practitioner of presenting his extreme leftist agenda as moderate and mainstream.

Obama tells us he’s a disciple of capitalism while he gobbles up big chunks of the private sector and refuses to allow them out from under his government thumb when they try to refund their TARP money. He declares an end to earmarks as he signs a bill bloated with almost 9,000 of them. He boasts of his fiscal responsibility as he schemes to quadruple the deficit. He claims he’s making America safer as he shares with terrorists our classified interrogation techniques and plans to release terrorist detainees on American soil, against the advice of his national security advisers.

With his upcoming Supreme Court pick, Obama will surely select an uncompromising liberal activist but present him or her as an objective, non-activist jurist — as another step on his mission to mainstream extreme liberalism by masking it as centrism.

In his statements about his ideal justices, Obama, as always, has spoken out of both sides of his mouth as he has attempted to re-educate the public about the proper role of the high court.

On the one hand, he says he seeks a nominee “who shares (his) respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.” On the other, he says he wants a pragmatic justice with “empathy” — one who understands “how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.”

But a justice who respects the Constitution would not be guided by pragmatism or empathy, which are irrelevant to the appellate judge’s primary interpretive function. He would honor the court’s role as interpreter of laws and would resist the temptation to become a part of an unelected super-legislature, understanding that to do otherwise would jeopardize our liberties.

From preserved audiotapes, we know Obama’s vision for the high court. For all to hear, he lamented that the universally-recognized-as-liberal Warren court was not radical after all, because it didn’t legislate what Obama calls economic justice: massive redistributions of wealth.

It’s outrageous enough when the political branches redistribute the nation’s wealth and the court lets them get away with it. But it would be taking it to an entirely new level if the court were to start doing it on its own — a prospect that probably gives Obama goose bumps.

Obama knows that the advancement of his extremist agenda depends on his sophisticated propaganda campaign to fraudulently package extremism as mainstream and marginalize mainstream conservatism as extreme.

He will only succeed “to fundamentally change” America if the conservative majority stays silent, credulous and compliant and some of its would-be leaders keep covering for him. The upcoming Supreme Court nomination would be a good place to break this silence.

On March 3, 2009, almost two years after his first lecture at The Heritage Foundation, Mr. Sayet returned to continue his exploration of the modern liberal mindset.

Postponing Reality
by Thomas Sowell

Some of us were raised to believe that reality is inescapable. But that just shows how far behind the times we are. Today, reality is optional. At the very least, it can be postponed.

Kids in school are not learning? Not a problem. Just promote them on to the next grade anyway. Call it “compassion,” so as not to hurt their “self-esteem.”

Can’t meet college admissions standards after they graduate from high school? Denounce those standards as just arbitrary barriers to favor the privileged, and demand that exceptions be made.

Can’t do math or science after they are in college? Denounce those courses for their rigidity and insensitivity, and create softer courses that the students can pass to get their degrees.

Once they are out in the real world, people with diplomas and degrees– but with no real education– can hit a wall. But by then the day of reckoning has been postponed for 15 or more years. Of course, the reckoning itself can last the rest of their lives.

The current bailout extravaganza is applying the postponement of reality democratically– to the rich as well as the poor, to the irresponsible as well as to the responsible, to the inefficient as well as to the efficient. It is a triumph of the non-judgmental philosophy that we have heard so much about in high-toned circles.

We are told that the collapse of the Big Three automakers in Detroit would have repercussions across the country, causing mass layoffs among firms that supply the automobile makers with parts, and shutting down automobile dealerships from coast to coast.