A Serious Tea Party

Under discussion: The Tea Party Goes to Washington by Rand Paul with Jack Hunter, 272 pages, $21.99, Hardcover.

What is the Tea Party? Is it the refashioned conservative movement? Is it the reaction to a new liberal Democratic president? Or worst of all, is the Tea Party just a bunch of astroturfing-Fox News-watching-racist rednecks? In The Tea Party Goes to Washington, Kentucky senator Rand Paul begins to give us an answer.

The Tea Party, according to Senator Paul, is a reaction to the big spending of Washington and a desire to curtail the power of the federal government. The trouble, or virtue, of a movement without a central hierarchy is that there is no unified message or platform. There have been a few attempts to present an official Tea Party message but A Tea Party Manifesto and That’s No Angry Mob – That’s My Mom are mostly relegated to the bargain shelf at Borders.

If there is a difference between earlier attempts at a Tea Party synthesis and Rand Paul’s it's that the current volume is attached to the platform of a victorious candidate. Since winning, Marco Rubio has shunned the Tea Party label he rode to election, exposing himself as the Bush family agent that he always was, while Tea Party losers Joe Miller, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle are already largely forgotten. So without the competing versions, the Rand Paul incarnation of the Tea Party shines brighter. And considering the contents of The Tea Party Goes to Washington, it’s sure to ruffle the feathers of anyone who would like to see the Tea Party either go away or be co-opted by the Republican Party altogether.

A note is needed first on the aesthetics of the book. The cover art depicts the Capitol Dome being squeezed by a belt, indicative of the diet Washington needs. But what’s most intriguing about the cover is what’s not there: a picture of the author himself. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich – all presidential contenders – all adorn the covers of their books.

Nor is this unique to politicians. Talk show hosts Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, and Chris Matthews all have their mugs defacing the covers of their books. This is no coincidence. Most of the people hawking books are not actually interested in ideas but only in advancing themselves. Will someone tell me what would be the primary difference between a Huckabee candidacy and a Romney one? What’s in Sean Hannity’s book that’s not in Mark Levin’s? The difference is only in personality and style. The fact that Senator Paul is absent from the front cover (although not the back where he is pictured with his smiling wife) indicates that the book is more about his ideas than about himself personally.

The book itself is charming because it is part autobiography and part agenda. Facing the first page of every chapter is a photo, including pictures from the senator’s childhood as Ron Paul’s son and several with his own family from the campaign trail. While these images and stories from the campaign and his life are affectionate and reinforce the already-present human side of Rand Paul, the most lasting impression in the book is how radical it is. Radical not in the sense that the senator should fear being dragged before Peter King’s inquisition, but radical in how there are real ideas in the book and not shallow talking points.

This radicalism is evident even before the first page of the text. Rand Paul’s selection of a co-author is Jack Hunter, a so-far obscure South Carolina columnist and radio commentator known to many by his alias, The Southern Avenger. This choice of co-author is remarkable because Hunter, a veteran of both the Ron Paul Revolution and the Buchanan Brigades, proto-Tea Party movements, had, like Rand Paul, also never written a book. It is not for nothing that Rand Paul’s collaborator was not an accomplished ghost writer but an authentic voice of the grassroots Right.

The fingerprints of the co-author are everywhere to be found. Chapter 3, “Equal Parts Chastisement, Republicans and Democrats” is vintage Jack Hunter, including a brief introduction to the neoconservatives and treatment of Fred Barnes’ sycophantic 2003 Wall Street Journal article “Big Government Conservatism” where the Weekly Standard veteran condoned and justified George W. Bush’s growth of government. Rand Paul sees the disconnect among Republicans who took this sort of blind eye to the Republican Bush’s growth but are enraged by the Democrat Obama’s growth. “Consider this – what kind of person would talk about how badly the neighbors’ kids behave while ignoring the bad behavior of their own children?” (62) is a phrase Mr. Hunter’s listeners have heard a time or two.

Not to be outdone, Rand Paul reminds Democrats that they are just as guilty of looking the other way when their man does the same crime:

“Contrary to his supporters’ belief, Obama’s agenda has not been a reversal of Bush’s agenda but an extension of it, only more ambitious in scope and even more reckless in spending. Amazingly, and perhaps ironically, even on the issues that once animated the Left against the Republicans – prolonged war, civil liberties infringements, the further empowerment of the executive branch – Obama has basically maintained the same policies as his predecessor, and in some cases has expanded them.” (59)

And this was before Obama reinstituted indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay. One wonders if waterboarding will be next.

But nowhere is the radicalism more evident than in Chapter 7, “A Conservative Foreign Policy,” and nowhere else is it more evident that Rand Paul is indeed his father’s son.

In this important chapter, the reader is treated to discussions of the neoconservative influence on foreign policy, the long-forgotten Senator Robert Taft, and a call to end nation-building.

Outside of the often insular conservative movement, there is scant attention or even acknowledgement of the existence of the neoconservatives and to find a discussion of this sect of interlopers in a U.S. senator’s book is more than just a breath of fresh air – it is a torrent, especially when there are phrases peppered in like “a Republican Party tainted by neoconservative ideology.”

The importance of the issues discussed in this chapter have been brought up before in Ron Paul’s books and more academic treatises, but the blessing in Rand Paul’s book is that he makes arguments that got his father booed without incurring the same wrath himself. In other words, Rand Paul takes foreign policy, an issue on which there was no allowable dissent during the Bush years, and presents it in a way that can be accepted by conservatives:

“The great irony is that conservatives preach individual responsibility and reliance domestically but practice policies abroad that create dependence on foreign aid and dependence on foreign soldiers. Where conservatives will ask the domestically unemployed to seek work and become independent of government welfare, abroad we let nations depend on our succor. We don’t demand the same self-reliance internationally that we do domestically.” (131-132)

If there are a couple of faults with The Tea Party Goes to Washington they have to do with the frequent references to his father. Littered throughout the text are phrases like “My father always says . . .” or “My dad believes . . .” but these are only slightly distracting. This is not necessarily Rand Paul’s fault – it just proves he came from a stable home and his father was obviously around enough to influence him – but this may expose the younger Paul to criticism among the uneducated that he is just a clone of his father.

There were also a couple of minor historical errors regarding years. On page 144, Gerald Ford is referred to as the moderate candidate for president in 1974, the year Ford ascended to the presidency, not the year he was a candidate for president, which was 1976. Then on page 154, Neville Chamberlain is said to have signed a peace treaty with Germany in 1939, the “appeasement” of Hitler. The author is probably thinking about the Munich Agreement which was in 1938.

The Tea Party Goes to Washington, with over four pages of recommended books and websites at the end, is undeniably a book about not just ideas, but fresh ideas. The Republican establishment did its best to wall Rand Paul out of the U.S. Senate during the 2010 primary, in much the same way they did to his father at the 2008 Republican National Convention, a sleight that does not go unnoticed by the son.

It's easy to see why.

Fear! Fear! Fear the kookiness of Rand Paul!

Feeling the heat that Rand Paul is a real threat to beat him in the Republican primary, establishment pick Trey Grayson has resorted to personal attacks more than six months before the primary.

The move isn’t even a surprise. Being the son of Ron Paul has its downsides: the establishment hates you.

By raising over $1 million in the third quarter, nearly doubling the amount raised by the secretary of state, Grayson knows that young Dr. Paul will be able to get his name out there and be a force to be reckoned with.

Attempting to turn Rand Paul’s asset as an outsider on its head, Grayson earlier this month said, “He’s an outsider. He’s not a Kentuckian. You know, I’m a 5th generation Kentuckian, educated here in the public schools, raising my family here.”

“I’m a 5th generation Kentuckian.” As my friend Don Rickles would say, “Would you like a cookie?”

Something deep inside tells me that Grayson did not say the same thing to Alabama-born and ergo fellow outsider Mitch McConnell last month when the senate minority leader and 16 other Republican senators who supported last year’s bailouts threw a $500 per plate Washington D.C. fundraiser for him.

But Rand Paul, who has lived in the Bluegrass State since 1993, landed the real zinger in this verbal dust-up: “I’ve been a Kentuckian longer than Grayson’s been a Republican,” reminding voters that their Republican secretary of state was a Democratic delegate for Bill Clinton in 1992.

The other recent smear against Rand Paul is pure farce. It’s so bad . . .

In unison: “How bad was it?”

It’s so bad that if I didn’t know better, I would have suspected the Rand Paul campaign of making it up just so they could make their opponent and his supporters look foolish.

Trey Grayson can thank Breathitt County GOP chairman and campaign donor Mike Bryant for his cute website: Too Kooky For Kentucky.

The title itself is not surprising either. In “Fire Two!” after Rand Paul was smeared by the Voice Tribune of Louisville, I wrote in this blog that it won’t be long until Rand is branded as “just the kook son of chief kook Ron Paul.” Lo and behold, the picture at the head of Too Kooky for Kentucky has Ron Paul on the left and Rand Paul on the right with each of them wearing a dunce cap.

Interviewed on WTVQ-TV in Lexington we meet Mr. Mike Bryant. Rotund, bald, and donning squarish eye glasses, he kind of looks like me without the long sideburns.

After obviously searching for some coherent criticism, Bryant says, “Really, we don’t know yet what Rand stands for in a lot of cases.”

This complaint is laughable in a couple of ways.

Neither Trey Grayson nor any of his supporters have any ground on which to stand when they charge that they don’t know what Rand Paul stands for. As I’ve pointed out numerous times here, the Paul campaign website provides detailed descriptions of his positions whereas as Grayson’s campaign website, until very recently, was as bare as Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard when it came to the issues.

The other point here is that after only a brief survey of Too Kooky for Kentucky, one can easily conclude that the editor does clearly know what Rand Paul stands for. His claim on TV was, let’s say, excessively disingenuous.

He knows that Rand Paul is an antiwar Republican, he knows that he is against the Patriot Act, and he knows that he wants to end the War on Drugs. Of course, all of this makes him “kooky.” Kind of makes me wonder if Mr. Bryant would have dared call the late William F. Buckley a “kook,” who in the last years of his life expressed sympathy with each of those views.

And every post in Mr. Bryant’s little site is entered under the pen name “Ben Franklin.”

In an entry that is probably too ironic for the Too Kooky for Kentucky editor to get is when “Ben Franklin” writes “Like Obama and Kerry – Rand Paul Speaks out Against the Patriot Act.”

If I could get old Doc Brown’s time machine up and running again, I’d like to take this “Ben Franklin” so he can meet the original Ben Franklin. You know, the one who said, “Anyone who would sacrifice liberty for security will lose both.”

Examples like this could go on and on. It already has here.

So why fuss over Too Kooky for Kentucky, an obviously ill-conceived smear website? Well, if it was edited by a Joe Schmo Trey Grayson supporter, it wouldn't be worth any trouble.

But it's not run by a Joe Schmo. It's edited by a county party chairman who actually did the voters of Kentucky a huge favor. Grayson, who appears devoid of any discernible political philosophy, has been shown exactly what is expected of him as a senator.

He is expected to be a Bush Republican.

He is expected to do war, he is expected keep government appraised of our personal lives, he is expected to ignore the Constitution and he is expected to do war some more.

But this is also the Kentucky Republican Party strategy: Slime Rand Paul.

They cannot debate him on the issues. If they could, they wouldn’t have to call him a “kook” or disparage his outsider status. Or they could tell us about the “unkooky” ideas of Trey Grayson.

What they want is for Rand Paul to just go away. He’s inconveniencing Trey Grayson’s ascension as Mitch McConnell Jr.

But since Rand Paul insists on yapping his gums about antiquated ideas like the Constitution and balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility the Grayson people will have just one card to play:

The FEAR RAND PAUL CARD.

And they will play it, as they say in Kentucky, 'til the cows come home.

*

Stick it to Trey Grayson, Mitch McConnell, and their lackeys by donating to a candidate with real ideas here.

Update: Call and Adams, the Voice-Tribune columnists who smeared Rand in August (here and here) issued him a back-handed compliment last week in this column. They write, "Traditional candidates must secretly envy guys like U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, who can raise big money over the internet from donors all over the country in events named 'money bombs.'" But notice their contempt when they say, "If Paul is smart, he'll use the extra time on his hands to campaign with Kentuckians who can actually vote for him."

I wonder if they had the same advice for Trey Grayson, the recent beneficiary of a $500/plate D.C. fundraiser. Since it was in Washington D.C., I'm sure there were only Kentuckians there scratching checks for Grayson. Oh, and according to the Paul campaign, their August "money bomb" had an average donation of $86 with 70% of the donations under $100. Just some food for thought about the "big money" Rand Paul gets on the internet.

Is Glenn Beck Healthy for the Right?

Following the anti-Obama festivities of the weekend of September 11, 2009, headlined by Glenn Beck’s 9.12 Project and march on Washington, one must certainly attest that the radio and TV host wields some amount of influence on the grassroots Right and beyond. Beck’s exposure of the depravity of ACORN and a rare willingness to sharply criticize the Bush administration make him stand out among the conservative commentariat. But could Beck be just as much of the problem of the Right as its solution?

Watching in 2009, it might appear as though Beck would be a suitable spokesman for a Bush-less Republican Party. He wails against the bank bailouts and the readiness with which Dubya expanded the government. Beck’s eagerness to attack the Bush administration is commendable and many of those attacks are those which Republicans and conservatives need to hear because if someone’s goal is to cut government, restore individual liberty, and be governed by laws instead of men, the first fact that must be grasped is that today's Republican Party is not your friend.

The problem with windbag talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and their minor league impersonators, is that they never seriously challenge the status quo of their party. This is done to the point that conservative talk radio may as well be called Republican talk radio. After all, these are the folks who jumped on the bandwagon for pro-choice, state-run health care Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. The speed with which they followed the empty suit perfectly illustrates how empty the vessel of contemporary American conservatism is. And it is why the talk radio medium ought to be generally, but not completely, ignored.

Is Glenn Beck different? It’s true that he frequently has Ron Paul as a guest, as well as his son, Rand. Judge Andrew Napolitano, who readily calls Republican and Democratic politicians the criminals that they are, is a regular guest host. Another regular is Professor Kevin Gutzman, a contributor to takimag.com, among the most anti-Bush and anti-GOP establishment webzines, Left or Right, to talk about states’ rights, an issue faux conservatives avoid like the Bubonic plague. Plus, Glenn Beck openly criticizes the Republican Party when the sycophants are still tip-toeing around the fact that maybe Bush might have, possibly, done some things that might not have been quite okay.

I actually somewhat like Beck. His schtick can get a little tiresome, going from crying to yelling to having a fire-side chat all in the same afternoon, but he also does some relevant reporting. Everyone following the news right now has heard about Beck’s reporting of the ACORN scandals. He’s the only TV or radio personality I can think of who has actually taken a skeptical view of the Federal Reserve and the insane monetary practices of printing a trillion dollars. He’s also the only TV host I’m aware of who actually has members of Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty for segments on his show. To people like Rush and Hannity, Ron Paul is still a four-letter word.

Beck’s 9.12 Project is admirable and rather uncontroversial. “Common Sense” was a decent read and was actually pretty independent-minded, calling out both parties for their extravagance but most of it falling on the Democrats.

However, a recent mash-up video has surfaced where Beck can be seen calling Ron Paul a “crazy, kooky guy,” suggesting that last year’s bank bailout “wasn’t nearly enough” and that he “supported the Patriot Act.” Interspersed were neocon party lines of Ahmadinejad as Hitler who was making preparations for a second holocaust. (Also see this video where he contemptibly smears Ron Paul supporters for having a “money bomb” on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, as domestic terrorists, oddly foreshadowing the Obama administration’s reports about potential right wing domestic terrorism which Beck would ironically denounce.)

Such a video obviously has the potential to be easily taken out of context and spliced together in Michael Moore fashion to make Beck look like a despicable flip-flopper. Indeed, anyone could be embarrassed by seeing their worst predictions all glued together. For example, in a needlessly rambling blog from over a year ago, I implied support for the war in Afghanistan over the one in Iraq, a position I certainly do not hold today.

Since the material from the nefarious video was originally uttered, Beck has admitted that he did support the Patriot Act but regrets it. In a more surprising video, Beck reveals that

“I guess the scales are falling off my eyes. . . . In 1900 with Teddy Roosevelt . . . we’re going to tell the rest of the world, ‘We’re going to spread democracy.’ . . . in Latin America, we really became thuggish and brutish. It only got worse after the next progressive came into office . . . the next one was a Democratic progressive, Woodrow Wilson, and we did, we empire built. The Democrats felt we needed to empire build with one giant, global government, it was originally . . . League of Nations . . . then it became the United Nations, one world government. The Republicans took it as ‘We’re going to lead the world and we’ll be the leader of it.’ I don’t think we should be either of those. I think we need to mind our own business and protect our own people. When somebody hits us, hit back hard, and then come home.” (emphasis mine)

If there is one issue that continues to unite the mainstream Right, outside of opposition to Obama, it’s the unwavering support for Bush’s wars. Even if it took him more than seven years, Glenn Beck should be commended for speaking out against enduring military occupations. May he keep it up.

But it’s still quite precarious that Glenn Beck has shed his more odious positions once the Republicans were thoroughly repudiated. His antics are a bit annoying, bordering on bad soap opera acting, but he still displays better independence than his more unoriginal talk radio colleagues.

So, is Glenn Beck healthy for the Right? Maybe, maybe not. Is he part of the solution or is he part of the problem? If he’s part of the problem, he’s far less of it than Rush, Hannity, Levin or Coulter.

Conservatives have been betrayed in an unrepentant fashion for the entirety of this century. If the evolution of Beck’s positions mean anything, it means that he might be a spokesman and a platform for an effective and genuine anti-government movement. It also means he’s someone who’s worth keeping at an arm’s length for any Republican Party that wants to move past the errors of the Bush administration.

Rand Paul - Change Worth Having

*At the request of my friend Tim, the Left Coast Rebel, I have written up a general action plan in our quest to see Rand Paul elected to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky. Enjoy.

There is little question remaining as to whether President Obama acted on his mandate to bring “change.” Now his poll numbers are slipping. Republicans, who were recently told the party may go the way of the dodo, are salivating about the possibility of returning to power as early as 2010.

Not so fast.

Republicans may be able to ride a wave of anti-Obama sentiment, but they should also be careful what they wish for.

Texas Governor George W. Bush rode into the presidency on a wave of Clinton fatigue and when he left, both he and his party were a smoldering mess.

The GOP might return to power in the House of Representatives in 2010, but if they return with nothing but a Bushless version of compassionate conservatism, it will be a Pyrrhic Victory.

For a victory worth attaining, we must provide a choice, not an echo. We must have a real platform, not a mindlessly repetitive slogan of “At least we’re not Democrats!” We must have a plan to show the country that Republicans are the party of small government, not the party of barely smaller government than the Democrats.

While the Democrats are spending money faster than Ben Bernanke can print it, now is the perfect time not only for the Republicans to return to power, but to return with oppositional force and the power of ideas.

Enter Rand Paul, Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, but more importantly, he is running for liberty.

This is a time when grassroots Republicans can support and must demand candidates who will follow the Constitution and toe the party line only when the latter conforms to the former.

This is also the time to educate ourselves not just about the issues that face us but the candidates who purport to represent us.

Facing an establishment-approved candidate, physician Rand Paul has an uphill battle just to gain the Republican nomination. If a candidate, like Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, does not even post his positions on issues on his website but boasts about “listening” to potential voters, be aware that that candidate is doing nothing to aid liberty for the individual but is pandering to the anti-Democratic vote.

Simple exploration of http://www.randpaul2010.com/ will educate the reader and demonstrate that Rand Paul is a candidate grassroots Republicans can support, even if they don’t live in Kentucky.

Even though Dr. Paul would officially represent only Kentuckians, being a member of the 100-member Senate would assure that his votes would impact people in all states. Anyone unsure of that may want ask themselves whether the Republicans could afford to break out of their 40-seat minority.

But to wage a winning campaign, more than just the right ideas are necessary. Enough money is needed to stay in a competitive primary and general election. Rand Paul has calculated that although his opponents will likely raise more, he will need $2 million, $1 million for each contest. While that seems like a lot to raise for a candidate who won’t have the big money backers, no big contribution is needed if lots of people just give a little.

For example, last Thursday, August 20, an online fundraiser brought in over $400,000 to the Rand Paul campaign bringing the total to almost $700,000. The campaign reported afterward that the average donation was $86 and 70% of the donations were under $100.

Here’s the plan:

· Please make a small donation. Contributions like these to a candidate like Rand Paul assures that he would be representing people like you and it shows that large, united grassroots efforts can effectively challenge the corporate interests that rule both parties.

· Subscribe to the youtube.com channel “RandPaulsupporter.” This is a compendium of speeches and appearances Rand Paul has made from Neil Cavuto’s afternoon program on Fox News to Russia Today to what is apparently the back of a pick-up truck in Richmond, Kentucky.

· Check out Rand Paul for U.S. Senate, a blog I keep with Matthiasj of the Kentucky Preppers Network. We search the news everyday for any story about Rand Paul, his opponents, or the Senate race in general.

· This is just a subpoint, but stay educated. Rand Paul has already been smeared by establishment mouthpieces. Rand Paul for U.S. Senate is one place where you can arm yourself with the truth to defend against the lies. The party establishment is only concerned with winning, not promoting freedom or conservative principles. If you don’t believe that, just consider how many times Arlen Specter was elected as a Republican.

· Join the Campaign for Liberty and create a page, not unlike facebook. The continuation of Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign, the Campaign for Liberty will provide you with a variety of resources at your fingertips as well as a network of fellow liberty-minded patriots. Spend five minutes browsing through members’ blogs and you will be amazed at how many people are enthusiastic about liberty and not subservience to the State.

· Join facebook and become a supporter of Rand Paul. It may sound corny, but there are lots of messages and alerts sent out by groups and pages that follow the Paul campaign so you’ll always be informed.

Modest contributions and a grasp for the truth are enough to hoist Rand Paul to the nomination and all the way to the U.S. Senate. And it can be done with your help. A little bit of time, effort, and money from everyone who loves liberty is all we need to begin to chip away at the bipartisan racket of American politics.

If anyone has any questions about Rand Paul or the campaign, don’t hesitate to contact me via my blog where you can access my e-mail.

Good day.

www.randpaul2010.com/issues
http://randpaulforsenate.blogspot.com/
http://uncouthruminations.blogspot.com/

Fire Two!

A week ago, Louisville-based Voice-Tribune columnists Ellen Call and Julie Adams outright lied about Rand Paul saying that he had not been traveling across the state of Kentucky talking about his potential U.S. Senate run and that he literally sprung news of his decision to enter the primary race on cable news outlets in New York.

Continuing on Monday’s theme of the smear artists coming out for Senate candidate Rand Paul, the columnists Call and Adams are back and seem upset that their criticism of Rand Paul has generated a backlash from Dr. Paul’s supporters.

Writes Call in “Rand Paul push-back”:

“Julie’s column criticizing Rand Paul for announcing his Senate campaign on cable news channels rather than in Kentucky struck a chord with some of our readers. One supporter told us, ‘Yes, Dr. Rand Paul made his announcement in New York City on Fox News about 1,000 miles from Kentucky with good reason. From reading your column, you are probably part of that reason.’

“What an arrogant mind-set for a campaign to develop, considering potential primary voters as “part of the problem.”

What an arrogant mind-set? What an arrogant obfuscation of the point! Criticism of the media equals criticism of potential primary voters?

Does this not sound like the allegations made by Democratic hit-men that people protesting President Obama’s health care plan are only doing so because the president is black? It almost defies words and the bounds of rational thinking to honestly believe that that particular supporter’s beef had anything to do with potential Kentucky Republican primary voters.
Call and Adams might be interested in what I wrote on Monday about what the anonymous Rand Paul supporter might have meant by “you are probably part of that reason”:

“But despite traveling across the state, giving speeches, and apparently going hoarse, Dr. Paul barely gets mentioned in Kentucky media outside of his Bowling Green residence. If a candidate is habitually labeled a “long-shot” and struggles to get a line or two in a newspaper, wouldn’t that candidate at least want to consider a national media outlet that he knows many in his state watch?”

Call concludes:

“From reading all of the e-mails we received from Paul supporters, I get the impression that his followers look at him as a hero who is not like all the other ‘career politicians.’ I respect many politicians, but I’ve always found it sad when people place all of their hopes on one candidate who they believe can fix everything.

“This kind of hero worship is a sure path to disappointment, so Paul supporters may want to put the Kool-Aid down.”

These are interesting references to be sure.

Kool-Aid, one of Bill O’Reilly’s favorite analogies for “liberal loons”, refers to the cyanide-laced Kool-Aid drunk by Jim Jones’ cult followers in a mass suicide in Jonestown. Therefore, drinking the Kool-Aid means following a person or cause so fervently that it leads to your own downfall or death. Apparently these ladies think obeying the Constitution, adhering to sound money policies, and opposing corporate bailouts is not a wise course for the GOP. Good to know.

The charge of hero worshiping politicians who “they believe can fix everything” is a direct attempt to conflate enthusiastic Paul supporters with the legions of Obama zombies that inspired conservatives to sardonically dub the then-senator “The Messiah.” Call and Adams, who have no qualms about heaping praise on the establishment favorite, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, must hope that such rhetoric will convince undecided Republicans that either Rand Paul’s supporters are as delusional as President Obama’s or that a vote for Rand Paul is like a vote for the Obama agenda itself. After all, it wasn't too long ago that Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis wanted to exclude Ron Paul from the GOP presidential debates or fan favorite Michelle Malkin wanted the elder Dr. Paul expelled to the fringes of the Democratic Party.

What I’ve documented this week is only a tidbit of what will surely come young Dr. Paul’s way. The Voice Tribune is a small scale organization, but as Rand Paul closes in on Trey Grayson (WHAS - 11 in Louisville recently conducted a poll where Grayson leads the supposed long-shot Paul by only 11 percentage points at 37-26%, painfully closer than Grayson would want it this far away from the May 2010 primary), the smears will get more intense, more outlandish, more disingenuous, and come from bigger outlets.

Take the time to visit Rand Paul’s campaign website and browse his positions on the issues and then take a gander at Trey Grayson’s vacuous website in search of anything substantial. Also visit Rand Paul for Senate, my other blog where I collaborate with Matthiasj of Kentucky Preppers Network with a combination of original writings (some that also appear here) and recent news about Rand Paul or the senate race in general. But most importantly, if you can spare it, please donate to the Rand Paul campaign.

The addition of one constitutionally-minded senator won’t change everything, but he would be able to change some. The big government and big corporate interests of the Republican Party, even in the conservative state of Kentucky, don’t want the independent mind of Dr. Rand Paul. They want a Yes Man to Mitch McConnell who will take studious notes from the Minority Leader on how not to rock the boat.

Kentuckians should expect to hear soon from the media and establishment propaganda organs about how conservative and down-to-earth everyman Trey Grayson is while Rand Paul is just the kook son of chief kook Ron Paul, all of whose supporters escaped from the insane asylum.

As you should know from this week’s posts, it’s already begun.

Cash Clunker

*This post is a little old. It was composed before a trip I took to my old Kentucky home. This issue has faded somewhat, but the same problems exist.



The recession is on its way out! The “Cash for Clunkers” program has been a rousing success. The government agreed to give away money and people surprisingly lined up with their hands eagerly held out. The government printed up money (“It’s free money from the government!”) and the auto industry is back on its feet and soon it will be better than ever.

If only.

The lunacy of the Cash for Clunkers boondoggle is a testament to the government’s inability to learn from its mistakes.

Like the vaunted stimulus earlier this year, the “Cash for Clunkers” program was sold to the public as the avenue through which the economy will be jump-started. Just throw some money at a problem and like magic, it will go away. People aren’t buying enough cars? The solution must be the government paying people to start the process.

Unsurprisingly, the initial response to the program was successful. Despite saying that they are tired of others getting tax breaks and special treatment, people are generally receptive when they are the ones getting “free money” from the government.

So people are now buying new cars, maybe even American cars. That’s great, and all it took was a little government spending, $1 billion, to get the ball rolling.

And just like the housing bubble that inevitably burst, the “Cash for Clunkers” program is but a band-aid that brings no permanent relief, much less stabilization.

At a time when jobs are still not coming back, “Cash for Clunkers” offers no genuine solutions. Sure, people are buying cars, but does that alone mean the economy is on the way back? Closed dealerships remain closed. Factories aren’t reopening. The only certainty to come out of “Cash for Clunkers” is that it plunges the United States and its citizens further into debt.

Less than a year after the housing market hit rock bottom, people seem to believe that the government can create money out of thin air, pass it out, and then think that reality won’t set in when the money cannot be paid back.

Look at the housing crisis. Credit was massively expanded making more “money” available in the form of loans so that people traditionally deprived of loans could buy the home of their dreams. But the bills came due and people who should not have been approved for loans in the first place lost their homes. The same thing can’t happen to eager car buyers, can it?

The same general principle is at work in “Cash for Clunkers.” People are enticed with money that appeared out of nowhere so they can buy a new fuel-efficient car that they don’t necessarily need.

For a country that is still suffering through a recession and incalculable debt, it is dumbfounding to see that Congress and President Obama believe that creating more debt will somehow alleviate the current problems. It’s as if a doctor treating a stab wound victim decides that shoving the knife deeper into the tissue will make the stab wound go away. It makes no sense.

This program brings only temporary benefits but it cannot go on forever. Eventually the program will stop and lots of people will probably default on their car payments making this whole exercise a waste. But in the meantime, it’s quite likely that the same logic, handing out money, will be extended to some other industry. The U.S. Postal Service is in some financial trouble and thousands of offices might close. Will the government begin handing out tax rebates so we’ll send out more packages from the post office? Will they raise taxes to support the next scam?

Not likely. We already hear that taxes cannot be raised because we’re already in a recession and people can’t be deprived of yet more of their money. But isn’t that what “Cash for Clunkers” inevitably leads to? People losing yet more of their money for cars they might not even need?

The program encourages more spending when people should be saving.

But stopping programs like “Cash for Clunkers” is only stopping a symptom. It is the entire mentality that government can just hand out money to spur spending that needs to change. And the entity that needs to be confronted is the one that makes such schemes possible in the first place. It is not President Obama or even the dim-witted Congress, but the Federal Reserve, that giant printing press.

Printing up money that doesn’t exist is exactly what gets average citizens thrown into jail. But as long as the government has a “private” agency that officially finances its spending, people can be convinced that their taxes won’t have to be raised so the auto industry can stay afloat or that government-run health care is even remotely possible.

But before the Fed can be stopped, it has to first be examined. That is what Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” is designed to do. Already with over 250 co-sponsors in the House, the companion bill has a growing number of co-sponsors in the Senate. If we can expect government spending to actually slow down or even stop, we have to stop the mechanism that makes deficit spending possible.

To adapt from the historian Tom Woods, To stop the spending machine, you have to go after the money machine.

Audit the Fed.

She Did What?

Well, she does play by her own set of rules. Unlike Mark Sanford, Sarah Palin seems to have relinquished presidential aspirations voluntarily.

Like many Americans who were actually paying attention to news on the Friday before the Fourth, I was dumbfounded to learn that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was resigning, effective July 26.

Such a decision was out of the blue. The spat with David Letterman had subsided and she defeated another ethics charge, so why would Sarah Palin suddenly resign? As Mark Sanford’s political star has all but certainly been sucked into a black hole, Mrs. Palin had every reason to believe that she would be a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012. Either way, she had more charisma and a wider national appeal than the now-shamed South Carolina governor.

As soon as the news hit, I thought to myself, Mitt Romney is probably having one hell of a party at his mansion tonight, with his family and yuppie guests probably being waited on by an army of illegal immigrants, no less.

There have been a few theories peddled over why she would resign at this time. Could she no longer take the heat of being a public person? If so, why now? She readily bore her claws like a mama bear when her children once again were deemed newsworthy, so it’s doubtful she suddenly can’t take the heat. Anyone who believes Palin has a weak constitution is only watching the parodied Palin and not Sarah Barracuda.

Is she stepping down, as she said, to relieve the taxpayers of Alaska of having to pay the burden of her constant legal fees which have now reached over half a million dollars? I’m willing to believe that and if it’s true, then it’s the most fiscally sane move by a Republican since Mark Sanford decided to wait to see his mistress until he was on state business in South America.

But the most prevalent explanation is that she is resigning in order to stage a run for the presidency in 2012. If that is true, she is undoubtedly wasting her time. Resigning before her term is up, absent a scandal of Watergate or blue dress proportions, labels Palin, unfairly I believe, as a quitter, by critics on both the Right and the Left.

The most common refrain, predictably, is that she is unqualified for the job of president. Examining the U.S. Constitution, Article II states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” Let’s see: born in Idaho in 1964 and living at least 14 years in the United States. Check. Sarah Palin is officially qualified to hold the position of president of the United States.

But, if one looks at the massive (and utterly unconstitutional) bureaucracy that pervades Washington D.C. and considers how involved the American president is expected to be not just in American life but in events around the world, no one is “qualified” for the job. Therefore, if Sarah Palin is fundamentally “unqualified” for the job, it has more to do with today’s federal government than Governor Palin’s "inexperience."

Of course, her critics assume that she is resigning in order to run for the presidency, perhaps in a strangely lustful desire to continue pummeling a favorite target. It’s difficult to see how even the governor can consider running for president. If she does, Mitt Romney’s line of attack will be that at least he finished a term as governor of his state before ever embarking on a presidential campaign. Personally, I am altogether untroubled that she is resigning. I am unaware of any law that states that once elected, a politician is barred from leaving office, even if they are without scandal.

But the media reaction to her resignation has actually been quite comical from both sides, even reminding me of the hysteria cooked up while Mark Sanford was on his final trip to Argentina. With Sanford it was, Where is he?! We demand to know where our elected officials are at all times because if things don’t go kablooey while they’re away, then people might start to think that they don’t need government in charge of everything after all! Whereas with Sarah Palin it’s, How dare she quit before her term is up! I know she’s an idiot and I hate her, but I demand that she stay in office! How dare she abandon her people! How, oh, how, will the people of Alaska be able to put food on the table if they can’t be sure of who their governor is?!

Or as Tucker Carlson said on the July 6, 2009 episode of Sean Hannity’s television program, “People who think Sarah Palin is dumb and/or insane seem mad that she’s not governing the state of Alaska.”

The point of this little anti-government tirade is to show that states and people actually have the ability to operate without minute surveillance and babysitting from our overlords. It is also to highlight what I found to be the most revealing statement in Governor Palin’s otherwise rambling resignation speech:

“Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government.”

What a libertarian and non-presidential thing to say.

Readers of this blog (it’s up to four of you now) should know that I am not a Palin-aholic, have been critical of some of her policies, but that I have a mild admiration for her.

Sarah Palin has a nice story, worked hard, defeated an incumbent Republican and almost became vice president of the United States. She espouses pro-life views and walks the walk. I question whether a real conservative would really join the ticket alongside John McCain. I was troubled that such a stalwart conservative would adopt the reckless foreign policy rhetoric of McCain and that she would parrot the it’s-amnesty-but-we’re-not-calling-it-amnesty illegal immigrant policy of the Arizona senior panderer. Despite these troubling issues, I felt like battling for Sarah Palin just because of the ruthless attacks on her from an elitist media. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I was also disappointed earlier this year when she initially held her hand out for stimulus money when she had promoted herself as a fiscal conservative. She did, however, pull her hand back a little and returned some of the money while all the faux fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party cheered.

But I do not consider Sarah Palin’s actions to be those of a quitter. Saying she is a quitter to her state is to hold quite a dim view of Alaskans, as if they won’t know what to do with themselves unless they have Sarah Palin as their governor.

But back to the line highlighted earlier: “Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government.”

That is perhaps the most likely long-term reason for her early departure from office. Her political action committee, SarahPAC, is doing even better now that their namesake has resigned.

Similarly, the message of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign did not end when the Texas congressman ended his campaign last summer. The Campaign for Liberty, the unofficial extension of Dr. Paul’s campaign currently has over 170,000 members who are dedicated to educating people in their communities about a message of freedom from government and the advocating of sound money -- all this from a presidential candidate who was routinely ignored or mocked by the media and party elites for over a year. Just imagine how many people a similar Sarah Palin (who has garnered exceedingly more attention than Ron Paul) group might attract around a message of energy independence and the preservation of unborn life.

So maybe, just maybe, she does want to enact change in the country or just the state of Alaska by an avenue other than government imposition – education.

Good for Sarah.

My Letter to The Nashville (IL) News

The following is a letter of mine printed in the Wednesday, May 6, 2009 edition of The Nashville News, my very local paper. It is reproduced here exactly as it was in the paper except I corrected their misspelling of "taxpayers'" in the second paragraph and I have added the links.

Thanks, Congressman

Thank you to Congressman John Shimkus for voting against reckless spending and for economic liberty as he described in last week’s letter.

I would also like to take this time to thank our congressman for cosponsoring H.R. 1207, The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009, introduced by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas to audit our national bank. With endless bailouts and so much money being spent, Americans have a right to know what is really happening with their money. If what taxpayers do with their money is the government’s business, then what the government does with our money should likewise be the taxpayers’ business.

This is an important bill because even though we were promised transparency and accountability in our government, much of the government’s actions remain clouded in secrecy. H.R. 1207 has broad bipartisan support and opening the bank’s books for the first time in its nearly 100-year history could help usher in a real era of responsibility to our government.

It’s not often we can congratulate our public servants since so many of them embarrass themselves and their constituents, but Congressman Shimkus deserves our appreciation for joining a cause that puts Illinois taxpayers first.

If anyone is interested in learning more about H.R. 1207 and The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, I would encourage them to explore http://www.campaignforliberty.com/.

Carl Wicklander
Nashville

Tyranny by any Other Name

I recently reported on "a minor victory" when the state of Missouri rescinded its report that supporters of Ron Paul could be accused of being domestic terrorists or militia members. There was substantial outcry over the unjustness of the accusations and the report was rescinded a week ago. Some of us, myself included, thought that maybe we could turn things around if we only keep our public officials attuned to our concerns about liberty. However, an episode that occurred in St. Louis last week should serve as a grim reminder that just because George W. Bush went home to Texas less than 90 days ago, invasive government has stayed right where it is.

Last weekend, just after the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) took back its report, there was a successful gathering of Ron Paul supporters at the first Campaign for Liberty regional conference who met to learn more about America’s tradition of freedom and how to take action in our local communities to make sure our liberties are not eroded even more.

One of the Campaign for Liberty’s few employees (as many are volunteers), a young man named Steve Bierfeldt, was preparing to board a plane at the St. Louis airport following the events of the weekend. There, he received a highly aggressive cross-examination from the TSA that might as well have come from the Spanish Inquisition.

The TSA demanded answers, threatened young Mr. Bierfeldt while the young man remained calm and simply asked whether he was required by law to answer the threatening questions. The TSA thugs either did not know if he was required by law to answer their questions or did not care if he was required by law but kept demanding that he answer them anyway.

This youtube video catches a couple minutes of a rather harrowing exchange between young Mr. Bierfeldt and the people detaining him. The audio provided in the video concludes as he is about to be taken to the police station.

During this questioning, obviously meant to intimidate him, Mr. Bierfeldt has conceded that he does not entirely understand the law, which is why he asked if he was required to answer questions by the law. He clearly says that he will answer questions if he is compelled by the law and will not answer through intimidation. Then at 4:07 of the video, one of the TSA personnel said, "We’re gonna help you understand if you don’t," come with us, that is.

If this had been a movie, and the interrogators were German instead of American, that line probably would have been rendered, "We have ways of making you talk."

As the video progresses, we learn that Steve Bierfeldt was released and not harmed. He apparently gained the suspicion of the TSA goons because he had over $4000 in cash with him. This money, he says later, came from the revenues he got from selling Ron Paul and Campaign for Liberty merchandise to people who are most likely libertarians and who might prefer the anonymity of cash to a credit card that will follow them. And considering the ire raised by the MIAC report that Ron Paul supporters are suspicious, anonymity seems like a rather alluring state of identity.

So what does this whole episode mean? First, it looks like the TSA did not learn about the rescission of the MIAC report or did not care, which can also explain why Mr. Bierfeldt would be so reluctant to tell anyone working for the government about the origin of his large reserve of cash. He might be a terrorist!

Second and still very much with us, are the expansive measures enacted during the Bush administration that we were told were for our own safety and our own good. That was the rationalization many, including myself at one time, made. Hey, if we have nothing to hide, then we have nothing to fear. Search my records! Tap my phones! I’m not a terrorist, so I have no reason to fear my government!

Well, neither did Steve Bierfeldt, according to the law. It is not against the law to carry too much cash with you. It is the Fifth Amendment which protects us from incriminating ourselves and Mr. Bierfeldt employed it respectfully and fearlessly. He was a threat to no one. So why was he being treated like his cash was a machine gun?

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the interrogation recorded is exactly what should be expected in a totalitarian government that roots out political dissidents and locks them up. With the MIAC report in such recent memory, Mr. Bierfeldt had obvious reasons to keep his private contents private. He had plenty of reason to think he was being politically profiled.

This is our tyranny.

Many of President Bush’s remaining supporters still defend the expansive measures our departed leader took in the name of security. They say that he kept us safe from any more terrorist attacks and his expansive security measures are the reason for it. That, of course, falls under the logical fallacy of Post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning that since these invasive security measures took place after President Bush enacted them, that means they have prevented another terrorist attack.

But this episode reveals something entirely divorced from the idea of national security. Mr. Bierfeldt was not threatening anybody, had not harmed anybody, and was merely asking what the law was pertaining to his detention. If asking for our rights in a certain situation constitutes a threat, this is in fact a tyranny and nothing less.

What else would someone call the treatment he got for merely asking questions. If we should have nothing to fear if we have nothing to hide, then why should the government or its henchmen threaten us for reminding them of our rights and the constitutional limits of their powers?

If this is the way things are run, we are no longer living in a republic. For a republic is a government of laws rooted in the tradition of justice. In the United States, we are fortunate enough to have a written constitution and a bill of rights which tells us exactly what powers the government has and exactly what our rights are.

A tyranny, by definition, abuses its power and represses its own citizens and Romans 13:3 reads, "For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong." No problem there, but what about a ruler (or their surrogates) who holds terror over those who do no wrong, like Steve Bierfeldt?

To bastardize Shakespeare, a tyranny by any other name is still a tyranny.

And in no way is our new president and secular savior Barack Obama absolved from any of the blame for our current situation. A big deal was made when he closed the prison at Guantanamo Bay and announced the end of the use of waterboarding. Yet, he has done nothing to indicate that he wishes to close the equally repressive prison at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan or stop the practice of rendition whereby the U.S. will not waterboard or torture, but send suspects to other countries that do. He was hailed by many for announcing that the end of our combat mission in Iraq will be in 2011, the same as the security agreement decided upon during Bush’s terms in office.

While all can see that President Obama has done some to alleviate some of the tyrannical burdens on foreigners suspected of terrorism, he has done nothing to alleviate the burdens and repressions on his own countrymen in American airports.

And even if using these invasive, bullying, and tyrannical tactics that disregard the rule of law on our own peaceful citizens actually keep us safe, then would we consider ourselves any more free than the Eastern Bloc was?

A Minor Victory

Readers of takimag.com, lewrockwell.com, Chuck Baldwin, Ron Paul, and other followers of the libertarian, paleoconservative or anti-neocon Right have surely learned of the lecherous Missouri Information Analysis Center’s February 22, 2009 report for local and national government to work together and be on the look-out for dangerous “militia groups.”

Of course, by “militia groups,” the MIAC elaborated that supporters of Ron Paul and 2008 third party presidential candidates Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin were potential “militia members.” People caught with a Ron Paul bumper sticker on their car were to be regarded as suspected militia members.

No joke.

Granted, Glenn Beck, who has a certain amount of sympathy for the freedom message of Ron Paul, related an incident where a raucous group of Dr. Paul’s supporters overturned one of Mr. Beck’s buses, creating the image that all of Ron Paul’s supporters were a bunch of deranged anarchists.

Even that incident is divorced from the message of Ron Paul and the others. While some might have engaged in isolated acts of violence, anyone who pays attention to Dr. Paul’s message knows that he does not advocate violence but peace. People engaging in violence are obviously not heeding anything in Dr. Paul’s message, but only saw him as a leader for them to follow, and an excuse for them to take part in an event of monumental stupidity.

Anyone opposing abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, the income tax, or suspected that the sovereignty of the United States is being eroded in favor of some sort of North American Union, were to be considered potential militia members. In other words, holding political opinions that are to the right of the Missouri political establishment are dangerous. Perhaps even more dangerous is the notion that advocates for peace are considered more dangerous to the nation than a government that rushes off to war, wastes tax dollars, and would actively hunt down political opponents who held zero communist or terrorist sympathies.

Limited government hawks like myself were utterly outraged upon learning of this report. Could all of our paranoid fears of our own government be well-founded? Could we really be on the cusp of a totalitarian society that is on the look-out for any and all dissenters? Could this be the reaction we receive for holding the radical idea that our leaders should be required to follow the Constitution?

It sure looked that way. While this report was released regarding Missouri, I live with my wife on the other side of the river in Illinois, another place not exactly personified by benevolent government and virtuous public stewards. And Uncouth Ruminations is a blog that does not hold particularly understanding opinions of the government’s actions. And is some Missouri or Illinois state government or Homeland Security goon watching this blog as we speak?

Unnerving and scary to be sure, but a minor victory was scored recently.

Writing in the Campaign for Liberty blog, Anthony Gregory reported that the Missouri government has “backed down” from its now-infamous militia report.

Enough concerned citizens expressed their contempt for a measure that does not belong in the United States but in a George Orwell dystopia. Enough American patriots voiced enough outcry to their public officials that an utterly gross measure was rolled back. For once, it seems, the government listened to the cries of its people and restored a modicum of their liberty.

This is by no means over. The government will still try to infringe on our liberties, but will only try harder to cover up their activities.

But this is the way progress can be made. Gradually, peacefully, and actively protesting our government’s brazen acts of tyranny. We have unfortunately blown many opportunities (the Patriot Act and the rush to invade Iraq come to mind) to hold our leaders’ accountability and fidelity to the Constitution to the fire, but a victory is a victory.

And almost surely by no coincidence, this weekend in St. Louis, Missouri, Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty is holdings its first annual regional conference (which I will be attending and will provide a summary report later). Included in the weekend’s activities will be ways for liberty-minded activists to try to change the corrupt political system for themselves, instead of vainly hoping that politicians and bureaucrats will change their ways and return the government to its constitutional boundaries.

The retraction of the MIAC report was good, but it really ends nothing. Our government continues to violate our liberties and we must hold them to it.

Freedom is a precious gift. It’s humiliating if a foreign invader forcibly removes our freedom from us, but it is wholly shameful when we willfully relinquish it in the face of our government.

Dissent is not a crime. Sport a Ron Paul bumper sticker. Demand that your leaders obey the Constitution. And support freedom from your government. Do not let this victory be confined to the “Show-Me” State.

Try Harder

Well, President Obama got his stimulus.

There is little in the bill that is likely to make the Right giddy. Yet, there seems to be a chorus of disgust coming from Republicans of all ranks. The amount of pork and spending is indeed revolting. Barely less revolting is the transparent disgust of Republicans in the House and Senate.

Until they demonstrate otherwise, Republican clamoring about wasteful spending should be taken as political posturing, nothing more and nothing less.

Someone might be inclined to ask, Why? The Republicans were, with the exception of three senators, completely unified in opposition to the president’s stimulus bill. I would say that that someone is right, the Republicans were extremely unified in their opposition. But why all of a sudden? The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for six years and didn’t bat an eye at the monumental debt they created.

Even when they were demoted to minority party status after 2006, the Republicans didn’t get much better. When the vote came in the fall for the Wall Street bailout, House Minority Leader John Boehner led the GOP opposition against the bill, which led them to defeat the initial bill, and conservatives everywhere exuberantly cheered.

Hooray! Stopping this bailout and saving the taxpayers’ money is just what we need to retain the White House!

Then the bill got revamped, crammed with pork, and the Republicans, including their presidential candidate, turned around and voted in favor of the bigger bill. And then more Republicans were sent home after the election.

So how are things different now? There’s a Democratic president now, but his philosophy on spending is not much different from his predecessor’s. Both the defense and domestic budgets are bloated. There’s lots of pork and political pet projects. So what’s the difference?

It turns out Republicans are probably only concerned with fiscal sanity when it benefits them politically. They realize that billions in the bill are not “stimulus-related” and the actual stimulus the bill might provide will be marginal and won’t take effect for perhaps a couple of years. They had nothing to gain in voting for it. The stimulus was the initiative of the Democrats, it was loaded with pork and waste, and will probably instigate little growth that is outside the realm of the federal government. We already know that Republicans are just fine with stimulus bills if they are proposed by a Republican president. This is sheer political posturing and the Republicans’ only motivation is to take cover.

This is precisely why the Republicans are still a dormant party. Nobody should take this prodigal fiscal sanity seriously. The Republicans are screaming about how President Obama is spending the country into oblivion and that our children will have to shoulder the weight of this ghastly debt.

That is a very good point. Yet, where was this revulsion when George W. Bush was doing the exact same sort of spending?

And if Barack Obama is the one who sends us spiraling into terminal debt or an unscrupulous burden on our descendants, then it is because George W. Bush set the table for him. Why is President Obama’s spending evil and irresponsible when his predecessor’s was barely more responsible?

* * *

It is precisely because they supported George W. Bush’s every wish and whim and passed everything he wanted that this newfound opposition has to be politically motivated and nothing else.

Case in point: Missouri Republican Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond, inserted legislation into the bill committing money to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a bill that he later voted “no” on.

That seems kind of odd. While I cannot gaze into the man’s heart, to the naked eye, it looks like having it both ways plus one: making sure money gets allocated, voting no on the entire bill, and then getting credit for appearing to care about the motorcycle industry. He doesn’t care about how much is actually in the bill, just how he can best benefit from his “no” vote. Those are not political principles at work, but sheer deception.

* * *

If the slow-moving stimulus really takes some sort of effect by 2010, the midterm elections will be just as disastrous for the Republicans as the last two have been.

If the Republicans wish to get out of their purgatory of minority status, they, like the president’s stimulus, will need some time. They will need it to prove themselves worthy of governing again, after such a dismal record during the Bush years.

But if the stimulus is an historic failure, then that will provide an opening for Republican congressional gains in 2010 and in 2012, our next presidential election year. It will take a new Republican president to determine whether Republicans have really learned their lesson or not. It’s easy for Republicans to oppose a liberal Democratic president with big-spending aspirations when the former’s constituents are seething. It’s quite a different story to oppose your own party’s president when he tries the same thing.

And for Republicans to come back, they do not need to move to the left or try to appease Democrats by dumping the social conservatives. To win elections again, they need to not only move past George W. Bush, but break his mold. No more “compassionate conservatism,” no more amnesty for illegal immigrants, no more LBJ-style domestic spending on prescription drugs, no more undeclared wars and nation-building, and no more they-might-as-well-be-the-51st-state alliance with Israel.

A Republican comeback lays in the somewhat distant future (4-8 years, the distant future in political years).

George W. Bush may be gone and not coming back, but the legacy he left to his party is still here and not going away. It will take a willingness to stand up to a president from their party who is overreaching in his executive power for us to see if the Republicans have really come home.

Of course unless the next Republican president has a record of responsible spending, prudent governance, and fidelity to the laws of the republic (be it Ron Paul, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, or someone else of their statesmanship) then it will be much easier for Republicans to lay claim for a new dynasty.

Again, that is for the future.

And I hope Michael Steele is reading.

Ahistoric Election

*I composed this several weeks ago but hesitated about publishing it. The recent thoughts of a friend of mine got me to reconsider.


Everytime I see that ridiculously sanctimonious commercial telling people to buy these specially-made coins commemorating the “historic” election of Barack Obama, I get sick to my stomach. I do so because I can’t figure out anything historic about his election other than the fact that Barack Obama is the first person to ever be elected 44th president of the United States and that he has a darker shade of skin than any previous president, and nothing to do with anything he has accomplished before in his life.

Readers of this blog (if any exist) have probably noticed that I continually refer to our newest president as the “Mulatto Messiah.” For anyone too dense to figure it out, I do that because columnists, commentators, and talking heads of both parties make it a point to ram it down our collective throats that our first black president has been elected. Since millions were inundated with the notion that a black man might be elected in “the most racist country in history” I feel it is necessary to remind people, who are so concerned with a particular man’s race, that he is not actually black, but a mulatto, a mix, a hybrid. The president-elect has a long-forgotten white mother. But that does not fit into the narrative of electing a black man, in a country that has supposedly moved past race.

If you don’t believe that this society is still consumed with race, I ask you to please reflect on how many times in the past two years that you encountered news stories on TV, radio, print, or internet, that called attention to Mr. Obama’s race.

That this country is still preoccupied with race proves that the millions of people who voted for Mr. Obama because of his race made a grave mistake in believing that this man’s election would heal this country’s “racial wounds.”

I make this conclusion based largely on what one caller to the Rush Limbaugh program declared on Thursday, December 18, 2008. A black man called from Detroit who informed the King of Talk Radio that while the caller was pleased with the outcome of the election, the host was unhappy because the color of the victor’s skin was brown. Never mind that Mr. Limbaugh consistently denounced Mr. Obama’s evocations of socialism, but take this is an example of minorities still thinking (or being brainwashed) into believing that any opposition to “one of their own” is equal to racism. It’s an entitlement that strangely resembles the entitlement racist whites exercised over black Americans for years. The only difference is that the roles are gradually being reversed.

We should have figured this out during the primaries. Bill Clinton, “the first black president,” was branded a racist because he said it was a fairy tale that Mr. Obama’s Iraq position has been consistent. While I agreed with Bubba’s assessment at the time, the former president has been more than proven right as Mr. Obama has certainly waffled on his Iraq position ever since he clinched the nomination. What this means is that race and the race racket won’t let any vestige or hint of racism die. It’s too lucrative and powerful of a political issue. There is no better way to shut up a critic of the Mulatto Messiah than by calling them a racist.

Do not be fooled into thinking that Barack Obama’s election alone will do anything to solve racial problems in this country. Dissent will be hard to come by during an Obama administration. It will be muzzled when the president’s sycophants begin circulating that the opposition the president is facing has "a tint of racism to it." Just wait and see how much grief President Obama will receive when a potential political opponent is implied as a racist.

All of this should serve as lesson in human nature and the imperfectability of man. If people look down on others because of their different race or support someone only because of race, one election will not change them.

Voting in favor of someone because of race is just as bad as voting against them because of race. Race is still the guiding factor of why someone voted for this particular person, it's just from the other side of the argument.

And does this attitude not cheapen Mr. Obama's electoral victory? Millions voted for him because he is "black" without regard to any of his political convictions. How is it any different compared to someone who voted against him because he is black, without regard to any of his political convictions?

Racism runs deeper in a person than who they cast their ballot for. In his book The Revolution, Ron Paul calls racism a “disease of the heart.” It takes prayer and the power of ideas to cure someone of racism. It takes time and it takes persuasion. And if Mr. Obama's election and adminstration would heal our racial wounds, how would he do that if some people still have a hatred of others in their hearts?

Perhaps it's just the old racist within me, but since we're still talking about the color of this man's skin, it appears we might not have really gotten over race, it's just not in the way we thought.

They Never Learn

Since 2006, when neoconservatism and the Republican Party of the George W. Bush years were thoroughly discredited, I began to realize that the GOP is like the Bourbons, the royal family deposed during the French Revolution, and fully restored after Napoleon’s final defeat. When Charles X became King of France in 1824, he ignored the liberals (not liberals in the current sense) and remained loyal to the royalist factions. Talleyrand, the distinguished diplomat, said that the “Bourbons had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” So it would also seem with the Republicans and especially the neoconservatives.

George W. Bush squeaked his way to reelection in 2004 but the victory was short-lived. His second inaugural address was skeptically received due to its unfounded and ahistorical vision about “eliminating tyranny from the earth.” As if Afghanistan and the only-beginning to burn Iraq were not enough, the president seemed to think that America had the might and mandate to eliminate tyranny from the world and turn every other country into another America - at the point of a gun, that is.

In 2005, violence ratcheted up in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina hit, and the president was quickly becoming an abandoned man. The shabby response to the hurricane signaled a failure of government, or at least the bloated bureaucracy. The president was painted as a man who did not care about the plight of the New Orleanians displaced by the storm. It has been said that that was the beginning of the end for a positive Bush legacy.

Iraq descended into civil war in 2006 and every Republican faced an uphill battle in the midterm elections that year because almost all Republicans had steadfastly and unconditionally supported the president on his war that the country was souring on. When those election results returned, Democrats, who promised they would end U.S. involvement in Iraq, gained 31 House seats and the majority.

So how have the Bush Republicans and neoconservatives learned nothing and forgotten nothing? Even though they have been abandoning the president in droves, many of the neocons are only abandoning the man and none of the ideas that led to the failure of his presidency.

When presidential nominees began announcing their intentions in early 2007, the automatic frontrunners for the Republicans were Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Both were fervent supporters of a war the American people had already decided they were tired of. No one in the entire Republican field, except Ron Paul, would admit that going to Iraq was a mistake. They only had differences with the way President Bush handled the war.

What is more, nobody would ever actually mention President Bush’s name because he had become such a pariah. But nobody would ever actually depart from the philosophy that led to Bush’s ruin: neoconservatism. There was no discussion about whether Iraq was the right course or not, only how it could have been done better, or whether we have any business beginning to bomb Iran, as if engaging that country militarily would prove any better for our country than engaging Iraq or Afghanistan have been.

The philosophy has not changed and the Republicans seem ready to continue losing elections and influence in the country.

This past Tuesday President-elect Barack Obama had his now-famous dinner at the home of George Will, who was hosting, among others, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, one of the main theorists for American intervention in the Middle East. The meeting has been called, “Obama breaking bread with conservatives.” However, there is nothing particularly conservative about any of the people the new president dined with (besides Kristol, there was Rich Lowry of the formery conservative National Review, New York Times "conservative" David Brooks, and The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, another main theorist of American interventionism around the globe.

What is odd about this is that Mr. Obama spent his entire presidential campaign complaining about the path George W. Bush led us down and how we can’t afford any more of it.

So why was he meeting with several of the people who either planned or vociferously defended this disastrous presidency? As I have commented before, it is not as though the president-elect met with those on the Right such as Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, or Joe Sobran, who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, as Mr. Obama claims he had done. Is it possible that the "Change" president isn't going to change much of anything at all?

Despite his occasional antiwar rhetoric about the Iraqi quagmire, he seems intent on escalating the quagmire in Afghanistan. Escalating any war is sure to make any neoconservative or anyone pro-war on the Right delirious, so they are naturally gravitating toward him.

Even though this ideology of perpetual war for perpetual peace has crashed and burned during the Bush years, many of these people are still intent on preserving it for some time in the future.

A word of confession is required here: I was an Iraq war supporter from around 2003-late 2004. I didn’t understand too much of the war or the region, but supported it because I wanted to support my country and my president. But as I expanded my reading and my reasoning matured, I discovered that perhaps this war was not in the nation’s best strategic interest and may actually hurt us. I admit that I was wrong and have changed my mind. I maintain that it is not a flip-flop; I do maintain that I have gotten smarter than I was when I was 19/20 years old. Not to blow my own horn, but I believe it’s a shame others are still blinded by their own ideology of imperialism that they rationalize that it fails not because it is a fallen, sinful world where no ideology can work the way it does in one’s mind, but because the current executive was too incompetent to make it work right.

This policy of imperialism will fail with Barack Obama, too, but it doesn't look like he, nor anyone around him, will learn that before it is too late.

Tyrannical Intolerance

When my native and socially backward state of Kentucky passed an amendment to constitutionally ban gay marriage in 2004, I am unashamed to say that I joined in with the bigoted majority. That much should not be surprising to anyone who knows me well. What is surprising is that the state of California also voted for a gay marriage ban.

For a moment of brutal honesty, I must admit that I did not take the now-infamous Proposition 8 very seriously when I first heard of it. I assumed it would pass. After all, those weirdoes in California would pass it, wouldn’t they?

In an act almost as unthinkable as Sean Hannity campaigning for Ron Paul, those allegedly pinko Californians passed the proposition 52-48. This was shocking because for years California has been running under a judicial dictatorship which granted marriage licenses to homosexuals. In an act that should have warranted his incarceration, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom joined in the act by granting licenses himself. The ballot initiative was just supposed to confirm that the people always wanted what the court had already ruled. Now the minority is shocked because a silent majority stills exists.

Less than 24 hours later, the mobs of gay marriage activists appeared to protest the vote. In watching the rabble-rousers and professional protesters, one thought leapt into my mind: Liberals only care about democracy when they win. I noticed this phenomenon on Election Night/early morning 2004 when President Bush was reelected and Republicans retained control in both houses of Congress. I was watching the results and listening to the talking points with a fellow baldy. At 2:00 am, there was a new shift of talking heads and the Republican was glowing. The Democrat, sensing it was all over for John Kerry, made a plea for the president to govern from the Center, despite retaining Republican majorities. It was laughable for 2 reasons: 1.) George W. Bush never governed from the Right as president, he did, however, govern on the side of the Republicans, NOT the Right, and 2.) The president’s party was victorious on all fronts - why should he have conceded the agenda? In 2008, no honest person believes Barack Obama, elected with a mandate and massive majorities in both houses of Congress, will actually govern from the mythical Center? “To the victor go the spoils.”

Should what has been voted on not count as law? That’s what these protesters seem to believe. Since the majority did not vote in the activists’ way, it should not count. I even know of someone who believes Barack Obama’s first unifying act as president should be to overrule the vote and end the bigotry in California. Aside from the ridiculous notion that an honest liberal believes that a majority of Californians are bigots, I am compelled to ask, What’s so unifying about anyone overruling the will of the majority?

If any real bigotry exists in this episode it is the bigotry towards Christians and anyone else whose conscience forbids them from tolerating the marriage of homosexuals. If some people believe that homosexuals should be allowed to get married, that’s fine, go ahead and vote your conscience. But there are still are a lot of people, in this case a majority of people, who still believe homosexuality is a sin and should not be rewarded. These people have every right to vote their conscience. Demanding the reversal of a mandate (George W. Bush was reelected by a slimmer margin than this proposition) is the ultimate act of the politically irrelevant and the sorest of losers.

This may seem like ranting about activists whom I oppose, which of course is one of the best reason to have a blog. Someone might be inclined to wonder, why does this cranky writer dedicate so much attention to what a bunch of activists are whining about? The reason is that this whole incident is actually less about gay marriage and more about the judicial dictatorship. It is because if the noisemakers do it long enough someone will step in and intervene.

The greatest victory of the Proposition 8 initiative was not that it banned gay marriage in California, but because it was a victory against the judicial dictatorship which illegally legislated from the bench and granted marriage licenses to homosexuals. It is a common error that only Christians and other religious folks oppose gay marriage. Secularists who still have admiration for the constitutional restraints on the government have reason to rejoice. No one should approve of judicial legislation. It is in direct violation of their constitutional function. The voters' rejection of gay marriage in California testifies to the undeniable fact that just because something has been codified into law through the court, does not mean the people approve it. For politicians' vacuous talk about the virtues of democracy, this time in California, it actually vindicates the voters who resented the high court's unconstitutional usurpation.

This issue is by no means over. This is evident because already since the election, gay marriage has been approved in the ironically nicknamed "Constitution State" of Connecticut, by judicial order, not popular vote. As of now, there are still only two states where gay marriage has been permitted, the aforementioned Connecticut and its neighboring Bay State, Massachusetts. The characteristic they share is that their gay marriage statutes were via judicial order, not legislative approval.

The murder of the unborn has already been an established law for a generation, which by no coincidence, was also granted through a judicial order. November 4 was perhaps only a momentary victory against the judicial dictatorship, but a victory nonetheless. When the inevitable pressure comes for the California high court to grant marriage licenses again, there should also be a proportionate response from those who oppose both gay marriage and the usurpation by that court. They should say “No Dictatorship!”

The Blame Game

That more Republicans were routed was expected and sadly, Lindsey Graham was not among them. The damage could have been worse but it was done nonetheless. In the days since the historic election of our country’s first mulatto president, the GOP has been scrambling to figure out why the results were so catastrophic. They have been playing every loser’s favorite pastime: the blame game.

As I have previously conjectured, the biggest problem for the Republican presidential ticket was its nominee, John McCain. However, that is not the news that has been wafting out of what is the remainder of the McCain Camp. Not 24 hours after Mr. McCain’s concession speech did anonymous sources from the McCain campaign begin leaking to the press about how scatter-brained, unprepared, and bitchy vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin turned out to be. This after John McCain himself defended her time and again in the past two months and insisted that he really knew her well.

One of the popular reasons given for John McCain’s loss was the dismal selection of this running mate. From spring through the last weeks of summer, the McCain campaign was spinning its wheels. The freshman senator from Illinois was the toast of the liberal media. He made an even bigger splash by selecting Joe “Big Mouth” Biden, a veteran Washington bureaucrat if there ever was one. Mr. Obama was praised for acknowledging his deficiencies in foreign affairs and picked a supposed expert to help guide him. It smacked of the selection of one Richard Cheney.

So, with the media continuing to drool all over the Great Purveyor of White Guilt, John McCain, trailing in every poll, struggling with a despondent party base, had to do something bold and drastic, and did. The selection of the Alaska governor energized the reluctant conservatives who have never been comfortable with Mr. McCain. They wanted to hear the Democrats’ favorite Republican talk about abortion, gay marriage, and traditional values, Mac’s least favorite talking points. Sarah Palin became the voice to pacify those dissidents and she ended up bringing almost all of them into the Republican fold. She was the greatest gift possible for John McCain’s campaign.

But after a few dismal interviews with the elite liberal media and after her attack dog shtick got old, there were grumblings, even from Republicans, that the good lady had to go. And thus were the first signs that if the Republican ticket lost, the blame would fall on the VP.

And so it has. Never mind that John McCain’s margin of loss was probably smaller, yes smaller, than it would have been had he not selected Mrs. Palin. Had Joe “Partial-Birth” Lieberman or Tom “Terror Level” Ridge been selected, none of the conservatives would have gone with the GOP this year. While Mr. Obama ended up with a hefty electoral vote total, the electoral map was far more red than blue. A McCain-Lieberman or McCain-Ridge ticket would have resulted in a McGovern-like loss and political marginalization for the Republicans. The Religious Right, and its sympathizers like myself, are the most reliable voters the party has. Remove abortion from the platform and the Reagan Democrats will return to their otherwise natural home.

The second scapegoat of the GOP loss arises out of the first one. The charge there is that the religious and values voters of the party are preventing the party from having a bigger tent. The folks over at takimag.com jumped on David “Axis of Evil” Frum’s recent suggestion that an overhaul to the party platform is needed from “abortion to the environment.” He would have been less obvious in his Christian-bashing if he had just demanded the values voters to “get out and stay out!” What is ironic is that this suggestion comes from a chief neoconservative theorist. Mr. Frum blames the values voters for keeping the GOP a small party. But this is the same man who exiled antiwar conservatives in 2003 who dared to question the party’s decision to uproot Iraqi society. He complains the tent is too small but he’s responsible for kicking out a contingent of intellectuals who did not fit into his narrow ideology. Even if conditions appear marginally better in Iraq today than in 2006, that does not change the fact that it is still an unpopular war that most in this country do not believe should have been launched in the first place. Based on this, is the GOP a small tent party because of those stupid and ignorant Christian voters, or because the party adopted a utopian ideology: wars for democracy. Are Christians shrinking the party or was it the policies that David Frum himself promoted and then fed through the president during his tenure as President Bush’s speechwriter?

Surely a change is needed for the Republican Party. However, kowtowing to Democratic talking points is not the solution. Republicans imitated Democrats in their spending habits for the first six years of the Bush administration and were perceived as corrupt as the Democrats of the early 1990s. For it, they were almost unanimously repudiated. For all the fuss made by the moderates and neoconservatives in the party about expanding beyond the base, they are the principal reason the party is in grave danger of losing the base itself.

Have Republicans not noticed that playing like Democrats does not win elections for Republicans? The country has not moved from Center-Right to Center-Left just because democratic socialist Barack Obama thumped donkey-in-elephant’s clothes John McCain. If it was Center-Left, would the gay marriage ban have been passed in California? The country has gotten tired of the Bush years and, rightly or wrongly, John McCain was painted as more of that.

Ron Paul and his message electrified the GOP before and during the primaries in ways no other candidate did. He wanted to bring the troops home, cut the budget, eliminate superfluous departments, replace government intervention with more personal freedom, protect one’s right to life, and return to the Constitution. It was a campaign that put Americans and America first, not corporations and false ideologies. Returning to these bedrock conservative principles should be a good place for the party to start if they wish to return to political relevance.

That is, now that the Republicans have time to sit back and reflect.