A New Surge for Republicans
Brent Tantillo • February 8, 2010 6:36am • Uncategorized
Peggy Noonan believes the election of Scott Brown to the Senate in Massachusetts is ushering a new wave of republicanism: one that stays away from those sticky values issues, and focuses on fiscal responsibility. I doubt it. Americans are an inherently conservative people who love their liberty. They don’t like gay marriage, but they don’t want the government to go as far as tell them what they can and can’t do in their bedrooms. And that’s what Scott Brown believes. If the Republicans can wrap up this idea in a bow and sell it, then perhaps the Democratic Party will experience losses in November.
Does God Have a Sense of Humor?
Brent Tantillo • February 7, 2010 13:20pm • Uncategorized
Apparently so, as he leaves global warming scientists, scammers, and believers in fits of conniptions, as he dumps record amounts of snow in DC, Baltimore, and Philly, and has caused Americans to experience one of the most severe winters ever, all while global warming scientists are admitting they manipulated key data to make the world appear as if it was warming. ”Climategate,” as this scandal is being called, has taken the wind out of the sails of those who want to slow human consumption and production for the sake of lowering greenhouse gases. It looks like an “Inconvenient Truth,” was only “Inconvenient” after all. Rather, it appears, that global warming like so many other things, was a failed tool to control the masses, an attempt to use fake data to make us inalterably less human — to force us from growing, prospering, reproducing, etc. Whether Al Gore was a puppet or ringleader of these pointy-headed pinheads will likely never be known, and frankly who cares? What really matters is that the “truth” did shine like a disinfectant upon the likes of Gore and his ilk, and their movement to control humanity as fallen asunder.
Some Weekend Reading
Brent Tantillo • February 6, 2010 9:11am • Uncategorized
I’m backed up on reading and blogging on pieces that I’ve put aside. Therefore, I am going to post a brief synopsis of a number of pieces that I believe are worth your attention this weekend:
* Apparently the trend of Americans getting fat is abating.
* The Ukraine’s Orange Revolution has been a disappointment.
* Apple Sees New Money in Old Media with introduction of iPad.
Mr. President, Do Us Proud (for a Change)
Candace de Russy • February 4, 2010 19:02pm • Uncategorized
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Mentally Retarded Lawyers: Uncle Sam Wants YOU!
Winfield Myers • February 4, 2010 11:24am • Uncategorized
In a world already filled with lawyer jokes, the feds have just provided fodder for more, thanks to the tender words of Rahm Emanuel. You’ll recall his quip–from last summer–that far-left activists who attacked moderate Democrats over their hesitancy to support the administration’s health care push were “f—— retarded.”
Following Sarah Palin’s criticism of him, Rahm now says he’s sorry (thereby confirming Palin’s weakness, right?). He’s so sorry, in fact, that he’s allying himself with groups determined to wipe out use of the “R” word.
As if on cue, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has posted an ad for 10 new civil rights lawyers. In line with the federal government’s desire to privilege the marginalized, it extends a particularly warm welcome to those with disabilities–including lawyers suffering from “mental retardation.”
The Civil Rights Division encourages qualified applicants with targeted disabilities to apply. Targeted disabilities are deafness, blindness, missing extremities, partial or complete paralysis, convulsive disorder, mental retardation, mental illness, severe distortion of limbs and/or spine.
So, did you hear the one about the lawyer, the priest, and the rabbi in a boat speeding toward a waterfall?
Eugene Volokh offers the most likely explanation for the ad’s wording. Some of the comments are keepers.
Channeling Bush?
Brent Tantillo • February 4, 2010 5:05am • Uncategorized
According to Atlantic Review, President Obama is growing increasingly impatient with Europe’s lack of coherence and purpose on foreign policy and has decided to stay home, rather than attend an EU summit of leaders in Madrid this coming May. The Atlantic Review pointedly asks, when will Europe begin to miss George W. Bush? Secondly, perhaps the President understands George W. Bush a bit better now?
Irresponsible President, Irresponsible Budget, Irresponsible Dems
Candace de Russy • February 3, 2010 13:59pm • Uncategorized
President Obama’s 2011 fiscal plan is, as Mark Levin has been widely quoted as saying, “the most irresponsible budget in a free society that any president — ever — has proposed.”
Doug Ross backs up this dictum with the requisite charts and figures, demonstrating that this wildly profligate plan, if adopted, would completely decimate our economy by 2020.
There can be no doubt as to what Americans of good sense must do about those of our leaders who would place us and our progeny on this reckless and destructive course. In Ross’s words:
If we are to save the Republic, this party of destruction — the modern, Soros-controlled, hard left Democrat Party — must be crushed in November at the ballot box.
Crushed politically until it is no more.
The survival of our children depends upon it.
Soaking Everybody
Brent Tantillo • February 3, 2010 7:15am • Uncategorized
The Other Club posts a link showing that during the George W. Bush Administration the share of taxes that the “rich” paid actually increased, despite popular wisdom.
Reuters posted a report yesterday, that was subsequently taken down, showing that the middle class, not the rich, will be affected more greatly by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The Christian Science Monitor explains further how this went down and shows much of the original Reuters story was actually quite accurate.
Senate Roundup
Brent Tantillo • February 2, 2010 5:16am • Uncategorized
Polipundit has an insightful roundup of the 2010 landscape in the Senate. The Republicans could pick-up 8 seats. They also note in my home state of Florida that Rubio tops Crist for the Republican nomination to replace the seat formerly held by Mel Martinez.
Brown’s Victory Not One for Romney
Brent Tantillo • February 1, 2010 5:57am • Uncategorized
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel believes that Massachusett’s other big GOP winner — with the election of Scott Brown to the Senate in that state — could be Mitt Romney.
Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts has most Republicans hopeful about midterm elections. It has Mitt Romney hopeful about 2012.
In many ways, the former Bay State governor never ended his 2008 presidential campaign. From a perch atop his Free and Strong America PAC, Mr. Romney has been raising money, nurturing his team, keeping himself in the national spotlight. With the Massachusetts Senate race, he sensed an unexpected opportunity to step to the front of the GOP presidential ranks.
He played it nicely. Aware that many voters have mixed views of his governorship, Mr. Romney stayed in the shadows, leaving other notables to stump with Mr. Brown. Behind the scenes was a different story.
Mr. Romney headlined fundraisers for the little-known state senator and used his own national mailing list to help raise dollars. He called on supporters to make calls on Mr. Brown’s behalf, and he harnessed his media operations to bolster the candidate.
His closest aides flooded to Mr. Brown, bringing with them the savvy of a national operation. Beth Lindstrom, a cabinet official in the Romney administration, served as Mr. Brown’s campaign manager. Also in Brown HQ were Beth Myers, Mr. Romney’s presidential campaign manager, and Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom, who worked on the now-famous TV spots showing a tax-cutting John F. Kennedy morphing into Mr. Brown.Mr. Romney got his due on election night. He was the first political figure Mr. Brown thanked for helping “show us the way to victory.” Romney allies had already been busy touting his role. “There’s no one who has done more behind the scenes and in front of the scenes than Mitt,” Republican National Committee member Ron Kaufman told Politico—two days before the election.
Not so fast. I like Romney, he’s an intelligent man and brilliant at business. I’ve known several who worked with him at Bain Capital and they say he’s scary smart. But, many if not most voters in Massachusetts attribute as one of their reasons for voting for Brown is their disenchantment with the socialized medicine system implemented by then-Governor Romney. As Strassel explains:
Yet ObamaCare’s model was the health reform inflicted on Massachusetts by a certain Republican governor in 2006, otherwise known as RomneyCare.
That precursor shares many elements of Washington’s legislation, from an individual mandate, to employer taxes, to subsidized middle-class insurance. The program has bombed, creating giant costs while realizing minimal benefits. A big reason only 25% of Massachusetts voters strongly approve of ObamaCare is because of this experience.
The state plan has become a millstone for Mr. Romney, yet he has refused to disavow it. Had he campaigned with Mr. Brown he’d have undoubtedly been asked about it, and undoubtedly given an answer as unsatisfying as those to date.
Mr. Romney has at times put forward selective data suggesting the program’s costs aren’t exploding. At other times he has complained his state hasn’t done enough to control costs. By October of last year he was arguing on CNN that “We . . . didn’t have any pretense we would somehow be able to change health-care costs in Massachusetts.” This, despite promising in 2006 that under his plan “the costs of health care will be reduced.”
Through it all, Mr. Romney has never backed away from his individual mandate, which requires people to buy insurance or pay a fine. Yet Republicans and independents despise the mandate, with many believing it is downright unconstitutional.
Mr. Romney’s subsidized coverage is meanwhile doing what entitlements do: crowding out private insurers, compounding the cost explosion, walking the state toward rationing. So long as the former governor clings to these central points of his health plan, he’s on the wrong side of free-market policy and public opinion.
That might be why in December Mr. Romney shifted again, saying his program differed significantly from ObamaCare in that it “solved” the “problem” at the state level, and featured no public option. But the public option argument has gone poof. And while GOP primary voters care about federalism, most will be hard pressed to parse the difference between a failed state program and a failed federal one.
And this is one reason among several that Romney has real problems in 2012 with Republican primary voters.
