Ode To Jack

Last week former NFL football player, former Congressman, and former Vice Presidential Candidate Jack Kemp died at the age of 73 after a bout with cancer. Kemp played Quarterback for the Buffalo Bills before Running for Congress in 1979, serving in Congress for ten years. As a congressman he championed conservative causes like low taxes, supply side economics, pro-life, and was an all around decent fellow.
He also ran for President in 1988 losing the nomination to Vice President George Bush. He was then appointed as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H.W.Bush and served distinguishably. He left public office in 1993 when President Clinton took office, however he continued to be a champion for conservative causes. In 1996 the Republican party nominee for President Senator Bob Dole of Kansas broke with conventional wisdom and choose Kemp as his running mate. The Dole /Kemp ticket lost to the Clinton/Gore ticket but during the election Kemp proved himself to be a smart and able campaigner and public servant.

Now that he is gone, I hope that this man will be remembered as a good American and a good champion of conservative causes and I pray for his family in this their time of loss. Also the Dole /Kemp ticket was the first one I voted for so it has a special place in my heart.

Updates from Specter to Tea Parties to Kemp

(Well a lot has happened since my last post on this blog so I will be updating tonight and the next few days so that my reader(s) don't think I have started go go soft.)

April 29,2009

Run Tom Run

Monday was a big day in American Politics, the U.S.Senate just became filibuster proof. The Democratic majority was just increased by 1 to 60, well it will be 60 once Al Franken of Minnesota finished "Finding" all of the votes in that contested race. This means that there will be no checks on the Democrats as they push there agenda over the next two years. Who might you ask did the Democrats gain? Well they gained a seasoned Senate Veteran, thats right Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania switched from the GOP to the Democratic party, stating that the party had tacked decidedly to the political right over the last 29 years. Now this puzzeled me as a student of history and especially political history I find this answer to be dishonest as Specter first ran for the U.S.Senate in 1980, on the top of the Republican ticket that year was a man named Ronald Reagan, one of the most conservative Presidents in the last seventy-five years, the GOP has been dominated by Conservatives since the late 1970's whenever we have nominated moderates we have lost, Gerald Ford 1976, Bob Dole 1996, and John McCain 2008 and Specter has always had a liberal to moderate voting record.
Yet now suddenly he seems to think that the conservative party that was conservative when he first ran is now to conservative. The reality of the situation is that Specter, who voted for the Presidents stimulus package which millions opposed is now facing real political heat from his parties base, let me put it in a way my Democratic Friends can understand, remember how you felt when Joe Lieberman came out on America's side in the war on terror and voted with the Bush administration on the war and supported the troops, remember how enraged you where at him and how you vowed his defeat in his reelection primary, well that is how conservative Republicans in Pennsylvania felt about Specter voting for the stimulus package, it was a betrayle, only difference between the two was one was a principaled stand that would make the world safer and the other was Washington business as ususal, however I digress.

So Specter flipped and became a Democrat, now he will run for reelection as a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. He will ask Democrats who have been voting against him for 29 years ( although he has gotten a decent plurality of the Democratic vote in his last few campaigns) to now allow him to be their standard bearer, I think he will win the Primary easily. Now if he faces his former primary opponent he will win easily and go on to be another rubber stamp for the Obama Administration in the U.S.Senate. There must be a check to the power of the Democratic party, as of right now there is not. The White house is Democratic, the House is Democratic by a large majority and now the Senate is Filibuster proof and the media well it is a lap dog to this White house so in order to maintain some checks we must maintain at least 41 Republican Senators. To do that Pennsylvania must be competative I believe that the only candidate that the GOP could run with any chance of winning is former Governor Tom Ridge, he is moderate on social issues, conservative on Fiscal issues, a proven leader as a governor, and an able administrator as a cabinet secretary, he also has won three times state wide in that state is well respected and is only slighly hated by Democrats and can appeal to cross over voters, he also has been out of politics since 2005 which means that it is likely some logic has found its way back into his mind. So If I where advising the Pennsylvania GOP I would tell them to go to Tom Ridge with hat in hand and 20 million dollars and beg him to run for the Senate it is the only hope to maintain some sort of fire wall against the coming storm of Obama style Big Government. We shall see how things unfold in 2010, hopefully I can use the phrase Senator Ridge one day.

April 15, 2009

Today all around this great country of ours tens of thousands of Americans gathered to protest this governments massive deficit spending. Many of those involved where people of a conservative political bent, however it was not exclusive there where many liberals and democrats in the protest as well. One of the symbols of this movement was a tea bag, to symbolize the Boston tea party when American's protested the unfair taxes by Great Britian by throwing crates of tea bags into the Boston harbor. Now these protests where peaceful and for the most part respectable, many politicans showed up and countless real Americans took time out of there jobs to attend and even bring their children. These where not protests that blocked traffic, or harassed the families of fallen service men and women, or that threw rocks at police, they where simply Americans exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and to peaceably assemble and redress their Government of their greivences, and yet to listen to much of the mainstream media these protests where made up of nothing more then a bunch of feeble minded bigots who hate children and orphans, and are all simply grassroots Republicans, the media made fun of these protests while covering them sparingly, now allow me to remind you that this is the same group of people who sent camera crews out to cover nearly every anti-war protest, it was so bad that it seem anytime six members of code pink met within five hundred miles of each other MSNBC would dispatch a news truck to show the "Ground Swell" of support against the war. Yet when Americans meet on tax day to say to their government ENOUGH! STOP MORGAGING OUR CHILDRENS FUTURES that some how was insignificant.
While these Tea Party Protest did not have the numbers of the anti-war protest they where significant, for the fact that most of the people who where there where actually employed, not simply retired hippies and college students, these people had to take time off of actual jobs to attend these protest. Something to mull over for the MSM when they start to look down on Americans actually wanting a say in the running of there government.

Obama's week over sea's

This week the President was over sea's in Central America at a summit. There he shook hands with Hugo Chavez, listened to Ortega give a fifty minute diatribe on the evils of America, and apologized for the greatness of America. Earlier last week he spoke about our need to open relations with Cuba, yes the same Cuba that has been ruled and is still ruled by a Castro brother, the same Castro brothers that have imprisoned dissidents, killed political opponents, tortured people, restricted travel and personal freedoms and supported leftist movements throughout central and South America.

So I was just wondering how this will affect our foreign policy? What sort of message does this send to our enemies and to those who fundamentally are opposed to the Capitalist way of life. I wonder what the leftists in South and Central America will think of America? We shall see I suppose.

The Whole AIG mess

Like most Americans I have been disgusted with the whole AIG thing. However I have a different take on the whole thing. I was opposed to the initial bailout of AIG, and am opposed to any future bailouts of that or any other company as I believe in allowing the free market to work ( if this blog stops abruptly it is because the Feds came in here and arrested me for practicing capitalism). What I have found hiliarious in this current mess is the fact that we bailed out a company, that was absolutely failing in the free market because of the business decisions that they made over the course of the last five years, normally we would have let a business fail but since we now live in a society that believes in equality of success rather then just opportunity we bailed this failing company out, but left all of the people who ran the company into the ground in charge, we left all of the contracts in place ( such as the payment agreements) and yet when the people that got AIG into this mess in the first place, where given a bailout and told to keep doing business as usual they believed the government that told them that and did so. Now we are amazed that AIG is still losing money and is paying executives bonuses to spite failure but thats what these guys have done all along and they got rewarded for it. ,

Now I don't buy into the hype, these CEO's did nothing legally wrong ( morally I wonder how they sleep at night but legally they did nothing wrong) as TARP had no provisions for how they ran there companies, the middle and upper management that got the bonuses that they were due contractually did nothing wrong, yet congress in its impotents wants to investigate, smear, and in some cases put at risk these people who where only rewarded by this same congress for their failure.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-MASS) one of the arcitects of the sub-prime crisis, has been spouting off about wanting the CEO ( the new Government appointed Ceo, it should scare every American that the governement is appointing CEO, I expect to start hearing terms like "Comrade" and "For the good of the state" to be thrown around at these congressional hearings.) to name the names of all of the people who got bonuses, bonuses that AIG was LEGALLY under CONTRACT to pay. This includes the middle and lower management as well. Now the CEO rightfully asked not to release the names as he fears for their safety, again these people have done nothing wrong legally, especially the middle and lower management many who worked hard to try to pull AIG out of these mess. He rightfully so believes that should their names be released to the public and a shill like Congressmen Franks and the political hacks in congress. It is very possible that wingnuts like people from the daily Kos, Moveon ,org or the Code Pink nut jobs might actually try to hurt these people and as pissed as I am about this stuff I don't want to see anyone get hurt.

I do have a solution to this mess. We tell the CEO and management of AIG "good game" that they threw one buy us and to savor the flavor and let them know that they are on there own financially. If they fail they fail if they manage to survive then they own the people of the U.S. ever cent back that we gave them. We must stop bailing companies out, rewarding them for failure only leads to more failure. STOP ALREADY!

Michael Steele the man, the myth, the legend.

(I recently recieved a request for an article on this subject and as I am thrilled to have at least a few readers I figured I would give them( and by them I mean all three of them) what they asked for.)

I was an early supporter of the candidacy of former Maryland Leutenant Governor Michael Steele's bid to be the new chairman of the RNC. He was a competent public servent, a strong spokesman for conservative idea's and principals, and made a surprisingly strong showing in a solidly blue state in a very bad year for the GOP when he ran for the U.S.Senate in 2006. I believe he could possibly even be a future President of the United States should he so desire that position.

He promised to revitalize the GOP, and bring the party back to political dominace once more. With that he has recently engaged in a series of statements saying his idea's where off the hook and that the GOP needed to have more of a hip hop setting. He was of course talking about the technology gap, the youth gap, and the money gap that the GOP currently has.

Chairman Steele also understands that the GOP must do better with African-American voters and Hispanic voters and he is absolutely right. We cannot ignore these voters and then be amazed when the Democrats ( who except for lip service ignore them as well.) continue to win overwhelming majorities in these communities.

However I think the Chairmans idea's and plans are good and hopefully will work I think his phrasing comes off as corney and unnatural. Michael Steele using the phrase "off the hook" sounds about as natural as Hugh Hefner using the term "monogamy".

I think that the Chairman thinks that he has to use such language to appeal to other constituencies, and while there is nothing wrong with the language, I am a believer that in politics people can spot a fake and those phrases just don't seem natural to Mr. Steele.

If he wants to appeal to the African- American community he must do what the GOP has needed to do for the last forty year, that is simply engage in the conversation in African American and Hispanic communities, stop being afraid of being called a racist or in Chairman Steele's case an Uncle Tom and engage in the arena of idea's, we are right on so many issues important to African American and hispanic familys, but for the last forty years the democrats have been the only ones doing the talking. We must engage, be willing to be rejected, be willing to have certain people assume that you are only there for votes and engage, and if we lose keep engaging in the discussions, let people know that the GOP actually cares about these communities and there future and the futures of their children.

On issue after issue to hispanics and African- American's we are right in our positions but we fail to engage. We allowed ourselves to be robbed by the Democratic party of our genuine role in the passage of the civil rights movement we, like idiots stood behind in certain states candidates like David Duke, and Strom Thurmond because we wanted to win and it destroyed any arguement and credibility that we may have had in the African American community. We stayed silent when the Democrats in the Senate elected a former member of the Klu Klux Klan as their Majority leader for Twelve years ( Robert Byrd (D) West Virginia). We failed to point out that on issues like school of choice, abortion, lower taxes, less spending, and a litany of other issues African American's agree with the GOP but we don't talk about that and we deserved to not recieve their votes.

Now having an African American as Chairman is a good start but its only the beginining and we should point out he is and was the best man for the job thats why he got it. I think that Mr. Steele will make a fine chairman and that we will close the technology gap and the money gap and maybe just maybe the GOP will finally start really fighting for every vote not just the white, middle aged, middle income, and upper income votes.

So while I think his language is corney at times I think Mr. Steele will be great.

Future Line up for 2012

Well initially after the election I said that I would wait before I started to discuss candidates for President in 2012, however with the rate at which President Obama is working to redistribute wealth and destroy the economy it is important that we as conservatives start to get some sort of idea about what sort of candidate we want to carry the conservative ( notice I didn't say Republican ) mantle in 2012.



First it is important that we have a clear set of position on the issues of the day. Positions that come from principal not political expediency. First we must have a candidate that will say NO to anymore bailouts, second we much have a candidate that is truly committed to fiscal responsibility, ( This one is gonna be hard, as we have proof of supposed conservative candidates getting elected President and spending like drunken sailors aka George W. Bush) third we much commit to eliminating all earmarks in the federal budget, after all if its worth spending federal money on its worth being debated, fourth we much have a candidate that will commit to a balanced federal budget by the end of their first term, fifth and possibly the most important we must have a candidate the recongnizes that there is evil in this world and is willing to confront it and that being the case will commit to fight and win the war on terror.



Now we have many possible candidates, the press will single out two to four that they will call the front runner and give all of the attention too. However there will be many and it is likely that the candidate that actually has the best platform will be a "second tier " candidate. Lets hope if thats the case that he/she will be able to pull a Huckabee and break out into the top tier.



Here is a list of some of the top tier candidates;

Mitt Romney- The former Governor of Massachusettes, who gained frame for turning around the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He was also known for giving Senator Ted Kennedy the closest election in his life in 1994. He is also a successful businessman with an estimated net worth of anywhere from 200-500 million dollars. One of his negatives is that he is untrusted by some conservatives as a "johnny come lately" to conservatism. There are also some within the evengelical community that don't trust him because of his mormon faith.

Mike Huckabee- The former Governor of Arkansas, and former baptist preacher was an underdog candidate in 2008, he finished first in Iowa and was the final rival of Senator McCain for the nomination. He has been a propentat of the flat/fair tax, and has spoken out about the need for arts funding and education in public schools. He was a favorate of evangelical christians within the party, he is mistrusted by some because as Governor he supported a tax increase for infrastructure projects which he later repealed after the roads were built. His fundraising ability has been called into question.
Newt Gingrinch- Former Speaker of the House from Georgia, and former college history professor Newt is seen by many as the intellectual leader of the party, the "ideal" man. He is respected by conservative and liberals alike for his intellegence. He is a hero to conservative Republicans for his leadership in the house from '94-98 and his passage of some of the tenants of the contract with America. His negatives are many, he is highly disliked by liberals and some moderates, his personal life and history has been less then stellar, a nasty divorce from his first wife, and an affair with an aide during the Clinton impeachment. He is also seen as to quote a friend of mine "an asshat". However his presence in the race would raise the intellectual discussion and debate within the party greatly and benefit the eventual nominee.
Ron Paul- The Texas congressman who's '08 campaign excited millions of young people, fiscal conservatives, and anti-war activists alike. He raised considerable amounts of money on the internet and while he had limited elector success he more then any other candidate on the Republican side attracted an almost cult like following. Congressman Paul has a record as a reliable fiscal and social conservative, he believes in a strong dollar, raining in the power of the FED to regulate money supply, supports ending the wars in Iraq and afghanistan, and has taken a libertarian stance on several issues, he votes consistently against wasteful pork spending and funding and bills that he believes violates the constitution. He is seen as unelectable by many within the party, he is not a dynamic speaker, and his abrasive style is seen as off putting to many people.
Mark Sanford- The popular Governor of South Carolina, he has been in the news lately for critizing the Presidents stimulus package. Before being elected Governor he served in the House of Representatives where he was known as a fiscal and social conservative. As Governor he has shown great success and even butted heads with the Republican controlled legislature over pork barrell spending. He is seen as a true believer in conservative government principals. Some down falls are the fact that he is not well known in the country, he is southern and some in the party want to avoid being marginalized and seen as a regional party.
Sarah Palin-The governor of Alaska and the 2008 Vice Presidential candidate, she was critical in energizing the Republican base to come out for Senator John McCain, she gave a great acceptance speech which for a few weeks after the convention gave the McCain /Palin ticket its only extended lead in the polls. She is seen as a young viberant leader, a solid social and fiscal conservative with a down home folksey charm. During the '08 campaign she took an absolute drumming by the media, she was seen as inexperienced and in some cases lacking intellect to be Vice President. Some even claimed that she hurt the McCain campaign. Others point to the massive crowds she drew at rallys and her stella fundraising ability as well as her ability to connect with certain voters as a reason to watch her.
Tim Pawlenty- Governor of Minnesota he has been successful as a conservative in a Democratic state, he is seen as pivotal in helping the GOP to broaden their appeal in the great lakes states and the midwest. The governor is seen also as not overly partisan working well with Democrats and Republicans alike. Some problems he may face is the face that he is not well known out side of political circles, his fundraising efforts may be less then stellar. However his voice is a valuable addition to the party.

There will likely be other candidates that seek the nomination, one may even win it. However the list above are the most likely candidates. The first tier candidates as it where. Here is a list of possible or second tier candidates.

Jon Huntsman- Governor of Utah, he was reelected with one of the largest margins in the 2008 election cycle over 77% of the vote. Huntsman is seen as a solid conservative and an effective Governor. However he recently came out for civil unions for gay and lesbian Americans, he also recently stated that the GOP must promote more environmentally friendly policies. This may hurt him in places like New Hampshire and South Carolina where the GOP voters are more conservative.
Mike Pence-Congressman from Indiana, he is a member of the house leadership as chairman of the house Republican conference. He is a staunch conservative, a favorate of fiscal and social conservatives. He is seen by many as a possible future Speaker of the House should he decided to stay in that body. His draw backs are simply that he not well outside of washington or Indiana.

Piling on Jindal

Well after President Obama gave his quasi-state of the union address, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal of Lousiana gave the Republican responses to his address. The governor's speech was lampooned by many pundits and talking heads, there were claims that it was written better then it was delievered, that the Governor might not be ready for prime time. Pundits many of whom had just moments earlier gushed about the Presidents speech tore the Governor apart.
Well within twenty four hours the echo chamber that is the main stream media had decided that Governor Jindal's address was a failure. Some even speculated that it may have jeaprodised his future in elective office.

Now I listened to the Governor's speech and it was not a great speech but it was good, he made several valid points about the Presidents over spending and a need for fiscal restraint. He did at times come off looking awkward, most likely a result of nerves.

Now do I think that his speech was an end of Governor Jindal's aspirations for higher office? Absolutely not, recall Bill Clintons horrific speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention which was panned by pundits and "career ending" four years later he was the democratic nominee and ultimately a successful two term President.

I think that Bobby Jindal has a bright future, should he decide to run for President in 2012 he will be a formitable candidate and will have as much of a chance at the nomination as anyone else. While I don't think that he has as much charisma as President Obama when you compare there records of success the Governor wins hands down. So I look forward to watching Governor Jindal who at 37 has a bright future in American Politics.