Definition of irony: when global warming believing, cap-and-trade supporting, RINO Gov. Charlie Crist is forced to issue an emergency order to deal with Florida’s record cold.
Florida’s governor has signed an emergency order to deal with the cold weather threatening the state’s crops.
Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday signed the executive order that relaxes the normal restrictions on transporting crops. It also gives the state’s Division of Emergency Management and other agencies the authority to provide growers with assistance.
Throughout central and south Florida, farmers are trying to salvage millions of dollars worth of citrus and vegetable crops. They are spraying them in protective layers of ice and covering them in plastic.
Forecasters say the cold spell will last through the weekend, likely breaking records for continuous cold temperatures in many parts of the state.
It’s been a tough week for the warm-mongers.
Comments
Print This Post
Big government fauxpublican Olympia Snowe provided cover yesterday for ongoing liberal attempts at a health-care takeover with her committee vote for the Baucus bill. She ignorantly summed up this betrayal of the American people by saying, “when history calls, history calls.”
If the erosion of personal freedom and the destruction of prosperity are what history asks for, then next time it calls, hang up.
Comments Print This Post
Having lost his best opportunity to steer the Republican Party over a cliff of squishy moderation on November 4th last year, John McCain is diligently working behind the scenes to bring about his vision of a worthless, Democratic-lite party.
His strategy is to recruit and support “moderate” candidates in his own mold – despite the fact that he was an electoral loser – like Mark Kirk of Illinois, who supported cap-and-tax.
Senator Grahamnesty rationalizes, “[McCain] has an understanding that the party is in trouble with certain demographics and wants to have a tone that would allow us to grow.” If he succeeds, the Republican Party will most certainly not grow. Pandering to identity groups is a strategy that has been a proven failure for Republicans. The most important demographic, which Graham unsurprisingly ignores, is the conservative base. Lose them and the party is finished.
He also underestimates the power of attracting followers by staking out principled positions. Reagan expanded the Republican Party with principled leadership that convinced conservative democrats to switch parties. With the growing backlash against Obama’s massive government, many Americans not currently identified as Republicans are yearning for a principled, limited government alternative. If Republicans listen to the likes of John McCain, they will find themselves ill-prepared to rise to the challenge and take advantage of an opportunity to increase their ranks through principled leadership.
Comments Print This Post
An NPR piece spotlights Rep. Inglis, a South Carolina Republican facing primary competition after being targetted as a RINO. I don’t know much about Inglis, so I’m not going to get into the merits of whether or not he is a RINO. But I do want to point out the utter shallowness and one-sided nature of NPR’s analysis.
The article repeatedly points out the risks of targeting moderate GOPers. If the RINOs are ousted, the party will be too small to compete, they claim. There is a basis for this concern, as obviously there must be a balancing act between enforcement of principles and inclusion. But they present a false choice when they make it seem as if Republicans can either have a smaller, more principled party or a larger one which includes a few squishy moderates. There are in fact other possibilities. Disillusioned conservatives that stayed home the last few elections could be persuaded to return if the party more consistently represents its stated principles. Likewise, if they continue to stray too far from them, even more might abandon the GOP.
What they completely ignore while fretting about the costs of ousting a few RINOs is that the party has already shrunk, and it did it by being too much like the Democrats. Republicans didn’t lose the House, the Senate and the White House by purging the party of moderates, they lost it by being moderate – by proposing big government solutions to things like education and prescription drugs, and just generally spending like there was no tomorrow.
But the public is fed up, and there is a strong anti-incumbent, anti-government movement brewing. If the Republicans are able to capture this movement, a feat that is not at all certain, it is likely to work to their benefit. But in order to do so, it will necessarily mean replacing some old Washington incumbents with new, more principled blood.
Comments Print This Post
The union investment in Barack Obama continues to pay dividends:
The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.
Schwarzenegger’s office was advised this week by federal health officials that the wage reduction, which will save California $74 million, violates provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Failure to revoke the scheduled wage cut before it takes effect July 1 could cost California $6.8 billion in stimulus money, according to state officials.
This kind of federal government bullying against the states was entirely predictable, and is why many governors said “thanks, but no thanks” to federal dollars. Gov. Schwarzenegger was not one of them. In fact, he stabbed these principled conservatives in the back when he defended the porkulus and joked that if they didn’t want the money, he would take it for them.
Who’s laughing now, Arnold?
Comments Print This Post
Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic asks for an explanation:
The GOP has basically been eliminated from the Northeast by the purists so there aren’t many great examples.
Contrast that with how Democrats treat people like Mark Prior, Jon Tester, and Ben Nelson. These Senators aren’t anywhere near ideal for Democrats, as a quick glance at the Netroots sites will affirm.
But they don’t have to fear primaries by party mutilators like Pat Toomey.
Why do Dems treat their Dogs differently
Is it a function of power? Or party traditions?
The difference, such that there is, is explained by the different manner in which Republicans and Democrats secure votes. Democrats do not have a cohesive ideology; rather, they are a party existing purely to win power. They do so by launching money at key interest groups and voting blocs. Essentially, they bribe enough constituencies to vote for them until they have a majority. This tactic requires little ideological conformity from party members, beyond a simple willingness to go along to get along.
Republicans win by representing an ideology. Specifically, one of small government and fiscal restraint. They lose when they do not represent this ideology or try to be like Democrats. When they hurl money at constituency groups, they bleed ideological support while gaining little new adherents. Those receiving this largesse are thankful, no doubt, but they know they could always get even more if Democrats were in power.
Because the Republican party has to sell itself ideologically, it must, on the whole, convincingly represent that ideology. Party members such as Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins consistently undermine that image. This costs the party more seats than they provide. Cutting out enough of these miscreants, such that the party can once again be seen as representative of the small government ideology, is necessary to its regaining majority status.
But so long as the media trots out only liberals, who treat the parties as two sides of the same coin, to explain the significance of events within the Republican party, they will reach conclusions that are 180 degrees off. But that’s fine by me, as it means the liberals will, once again, be taken completely by surprise when they are booted out of office.
Comments Print This Post
I heard this morning that Arlen Specter was changing parties. Upon investigation I was sad and dismayed to learn he’s still a democrat:
Veteran Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, a move intended to boost his chances of winning re-election next year that also will push Democrats within one seat of a 60-vote filibuster-resistant majority.
“I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans,” Specter said in a statement posted on a Web site devoted to Pennsylvania politics and confirmed by his office. Several Senate officials said a formal announcement was expected later in the day or Wednesday.
…Specter faced an extraordinarily difficult re-election challenge in his home state in 2010, having first to confront a challenge from his right in the Republican primary before pivoting to a general election campaign against a Democrat in a state that has trended increasingly Democratic in recent elections.
What’s amazing here is that he would just come out and admit that this is nothing more than naked opportunism. He was getting crushed in the early polls by Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, who narrowly lost the last primary battle, and that was before Specter sealed his unprincipled betrayal by supporting the porkulus bill.
Practically this makes little difference. The talk will be about how this gives democrats a 60 seat filibuster proof majority (counting the soon-to-be Senator Smalley), but that just obscures the fact there was already a 60+ seat liberal majority, thanks to the likes of Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
The upside is that now even the morons at the RNC will be able to figure out to stop supporting Arlen Specter at the expense of principled conservatives.
Comments Print This Post
Left-wing advocates of granting Washington DC a seat in Congress were heartened by the election of president Obama, a strong supporter of such a move. The problem? It’s blatantly unconstitutional.
Article 1, Section 2 says, “The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states.” It further states, “No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.”
There is no ambiguity here. States are represented in the House. The District of Columbia is not a state. It cannot be represented in the House. Moreover, no individual meets the qualifications above to represent D.C., as one cannot reside in the state in which one is chosen if one is not chosen by a state.
But this isn’t stopping Attorney General Eric Holder. When his lawyers at the Justice Department concluded proposed legislation to grant a House seat to D.C. would be unconstitutional, Holder basically told them to shove of. Rather, he took the time honored, corrupt politician approach of asking the same question of different people until he got the answer he wanted. This is disgraceful.
But the disgrace does not all belong to the democrats. Some RINO’s and misguided republicans are on the wrong side of this issue. The support of Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has been essentially bought with the inclusion of an extra seat for Utah. He and many others from the state felt that Utah should have received an additional seat in the last census, so they are willing to support a blatantly unconstitutional measure in exchange for this redress. But any seat would only last 2 years until the next census and apportionment, where Utah would likely have gained the seat anyway.
Others, such as Susan Collins, support the measure despite her own misgivings over its constitutionality. Her reasoning for supporting it? “I believed then, as I do now, that this question is best resolved by the courts and not by this committee.” This attitude reflects a gross negligence of her duties, as she is as equally bound to uphold the Constitution as the courts. That was the view of James Madison when he addressed the first Congress. He said, “[I]t is incontrovertibly of as much importance to this branch of the Government as to any other, that the Constitution should be preserved entire.”
Whether it be Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Orrin Hatch or Susan Collins, all members of our government have an equal duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Passing blatantly unconstitutional laws, with the attitude of “let the courts sort it out,” is a repugnant adbication of that responsibility.
Comments Print This Post
Thank the UAW for their stubbornness and refusal to compromise or give up any of their ridiculous benefits.
The final sticking point was the United Auto Workers’ desire to have until 2011 to reduce pay and benefits to levels paid by Japanese automakers with U.S. plants. Republicans want it done by March 31, according to a senate democratic leadership aide.
This is one of those rare instances where union stupidity is productive.
But this is only a minor victory, the war is still being lost. Part of the reason for this is that the typical “moderate” republicans (the ones, you know, conservatives are supposed to hand the party over to) are, as is so often the case, on the wrong side of the issue. The ten republican Senators who voted for the union handout bill reads like a who’s who of squishy, “moderate” RINO’s:
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Collins (R-ME)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Lugar (R-IN)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
And the House sellouts:
Barton (TX)
Buyer
Camp (MI)
Capito
Castle
Ehlers
Emerson
English (PA)
Frelinghuysen
Hoekstra
Hunter
King (NY)
Knollenberg
LaHood
LaTourette
Lewis (KY)
Manzullo
McCotter
McCrery
McHugh
Miller (MI)
Murphy, Tim
Porter
Ramstad
Regula
Rogers (MI)
Ryan (WI)
Smith (NJ)
Souder
Upton
Walsh (NY)
Young (AK)
The big surprise, for me, is Rep. Paul Ryan. He’s a strong conservative and someone I’ve considered an important piece of a successful republican future. He explained his vote in a press release:
“The American automotive industry is under considerable distress, and various proposals have been put forth to provide aid to those in need. I’ve maintained that any assistance to the domestic auto industry should be drawn from previously approved funds from a U.S. Department of Energy loan package, rather than divert resources from the financial rescue package or rely on additional taxpayer dollars. H.R. 7321 cuts through the bureaucratic red tape and expedites these previously appropriated funds. Because no additional taxpayer dollars were appropriated, I was able to support this legislation.
He also described “mounting hardships” in Wisconsin as “downright gut-wrenching.” He mentioned specifically a GM plant closer, and said that “jobs in Southern Wisconsin” are “at the forefront of his mind.” This serves to show the difficulty of our task. The pressures and incentives on politicians works against us at every turn, resulting in votes like this from even the best conservatives.
Comments Print This Post
The longest serving Republican Senator in history has been indicted by a federal grand jury.
In a press conference, acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich said that according to the indictment, Stevens is being charged with seven felony counts of making false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms. The indictment alleges that Stevens did not, as he is required to do, report gifts he received from Veco Corp., which included $250,000 of materials and labor related to the renovation of his home in Girdwood.
Ted Stevens is well known for his love of bacon and ability to direct it toward his home state of Alaska. Even the imminent threat of a corruption investigation couldn’t slow down his rampant porking.
“He’s at the head of the pack,” Ellis said. “His ability to bring home the bacon to Alaska is legendary and he doesn’t make any bones about doing that.”
Stevens gets his buying power from his staying power. With nearly four decades in the Senate, now at age 83, he’s the longest-serving Republican senator in history.
Less than three months after the FBI searched his Alaska home in a bribery and public corruption probe, Stevens proved he hasn’t lost an ounce of clout. He added an incredible $215 million in earmarks to the defense bill – more than any other senator.
Ted Stevens epitomized the failures of the republican party to govern responsibly. Let’s hope his eventual replacement brings with him more respect for the taxpayer.
Comments Print This Post
Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.
I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
