Conservatives, I have a bone to pick with my brethren. It’s over a favorite piece of red meat that politicians like to throw at us, one that we enthusiastically support, and one that will never happen. I am of course, referring to the flat tax. First off, let me be up front about my own views – I favor a flat tax. More specifically, I favor simplifying our tax code. As I’ve pointed out to our leftist friends in this post’s companion piece, tax rates are irrelevant – amounts collected are all that matters. Simplifying our tax code and making it cheaper to pay taxes will naturally result in more companies and individuals choosing to simply pay the tax rather than pay to avoid said taxes. A flat tax would be ideal – and it is never going to happen.

Before getting into the subject, let’s step back and look at a great example of how a drastic change to the law of the land gets passed. I am of course, referring to Obamacare. While conservatives were very well united in their opposition, the left were pretty much united as well in their efforts to allow all Americans to enjoy higher premiums, doctor shortages, and rationing of health care. Their main bone to pick with the law is that it does not go far enough to kill off the private health insurance as quickly as they would have liked, but at the end of the day, to quote the most eloquent voice of the left, it was their "Big F***ing Deal".

Now look at the proposals for a flat tax. Many conservatives will agree that a simple across the board tax rate of something like 20% for all Americans (a number I am arbitrarily throwing out) would be fair. Yes, the family making $50,000 per year is paying the same rate as the guy making $10 million, but at the end of the day the family is paying $20,000 in taxes while the millionaire is paying $2 million. How’s that for fair? Just as conservatives were pretty well united against Obamacare, the left will be against anything that tries to simplify the tax code that might lead to people actually giving up the same percentage of their income. Take away abortion funding, green energy subsidy sinkholes, or cut off funding to various members of the NGO-Nonprofit industrial complex (the only place of employment for many leftists without any useful skills) and there is no way anyone on the left can get behind a fair tax.

Wait a minute, that’s the same problem with conservatives. No, not the same causes – the same principle. Don’t believe me? we’ve already seen it. Early on in his administration President Obama proposed reducing the charitable deduction tax credit, suggesting that the government instead use that money toward helping to fund charities of its choosing (faith based initiatives, anyone?). Study after study has shown that conservatives give more of their time and money to charity than leftists do. And this makes sense. While I believe that leftists care about helping others as much as conservatives do the approaches sum up the two sides’ philosophies – "I am responsible" versus "Someone else should be responsible". Naturally conservatives were none too happy about this potential change to how charities were to be treated.

For most individuals this would not affect their giving too much. Many people give to causes of charities because they want to support them, not for personal financial reasons. Most of the charitable giving patterns for Sister Babe and me won’t be altered if this change were to go into effect. But we’re not the ones that charities are worried about. They are more worried about the larger donations that they get from wealthy individuals and corporations that make up a larger percentage of their operating budgets. As almost anyone can tell you when something gets more expensive you will see less of it. Philanthropists and companies will naturally look at what their best financial strategies are, and if the now more expensive charitable giving is not the best option it won’t happen. No, large charitable donations won’t disappear, but they will decrease. Being that we conservatives are more closely tied to charities in general we’re going to stand up for them, whether by maintaining the tax loopholes if not asking for direct government subsidy.

How about if we hit a little bit closer to home, literally? Conservatives don’t like the idea of doing away with the mortgage interest tax deduction, either. And lest you think that I’m only running an exercise in finger pointing, you can count me into this category. When Sister Babe and I bought our house last year I went through our finances in depth and laid out a few scenarios for what we could afford and how much we wanted to spend and lay down as a down payment. The interest tax deduction was one of the factors that went into the grand equation, and if this deduction were to go away it would hurt us, too. Granted, if someone can make the case for how an overall simplification would either be helpful or moderately painful at best, I’ll be the first in line to support it. But I’m not ready to sacrifice our budget if others are getting to keep their loopholes.

These are only two examples, and ones that are easy to illustrate. For every deduction in our tax code there is a special interest that will fight tooth and nail to preserve it. Sadly, politicians don’t have the will to stand up since it’s a lot easier to show how someone will be directly hurt by a closed loophole than it is to show how we as a society would benefit by simplifying the code. Still don’t believe me? How many presidential candidates walk through Iowa and talk about ending corn subsidies?

And that’s the reality we face. As conservatives we’re supposed to be the adults in the room, the ones who not only are willing to acknowledge that we have a problem, but understand that we have to actually take action to get off of our current path to destruction. If we can’t rely on the conservative base to rally around this cause, what hope is there of rallying enough independents to defeat the lefties on this?

Are you listening, Herman Cain? You’re exactly the kind of guy who can articulate a realistic tax reform approach to economically illiterate journalists and reach the American people. 9-9-9 sounds good in theory, but in reality it has no chance of happening. And this is coming from someone who was one of Herman’s Cainaanites back when he was in the race. While I didn’t think that 9-9-9 should have been his answer to most of the questions posed to him, I am grateful for the fact that he got the GOP primary debate questions pointed toward a subject as critical as our tax code as opposed to "boxers or briefs?" pabulum. The flat tax can be useful as an extreme position for bargaining from, just as the left used the single payer health care system during that debate. Obama was able to pretend he was a moderate by passing a law that would only gently strangle private health insurance to death rather than the immediate decapitation his base wanted.

All hope isn’t lost, though. Our tax code is going to have to be simplified in the next decade or two because it has to. We’ll either do it because we have the maturity to make painful decisions or because painful consequences will force us to. Who knows? Maybe watching what happens to Europe might even wake our leftist friends up! I’m not counting on it, but if we’re going to wake them up we have to ensure that our objectives are grounded in reality.

Now that it appears Romney will be our nominee I have little hope of taking the White House this election year.

So instead our efforts should move to taking the Senate and keeping the House to ensure that anything Obama tries to do in his continuing destruction of this country is stopped dead in its tracks.

So far we are not in bad shape. In the Senate currently there are 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans and 2 Independents (who should be counted as Democrats since they always vote with the Dem’s) so 53 to 47. 23 Democrats and 10 Republicans have their seats up this year so it’s quite possible we could take the Senate.

Real Clear Politics has the Democrats holding 46 seats, the Republicans holding 46 seats and 8 that are in play. Those being Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Montana is looking good:

Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg holds his largest lead yet over Democratic incumbent Jon Tester in Montana’s U.S. Senate race.

A new statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Rehberg ahead of Tester 53% to 43%. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and another two percent (2%) are undecided.

So is Nevada:

Incumbent Republican Senator Dean Heller has crossed the 50% mark of support against his likeliest Democratic challenger in his bid for election to his first full term in Nevada.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Nevada finds Heller picking up 51% of the vote against Congresswoman Shelley Berkley who draws 40% support. Just two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.

In Florida the Republicans are still battling to see who will go up against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Right now the numbers don’t look good but once the nominee is settled we should get a better handle on that State.

I haven’t seen much polling for Maine but the last one, which is a month old, shows the Independent King leading Republican Summers 56% to 22%. The Democrat running, Matt Dunlap is only polling at 12%. No idea if King will caucus with Republicans or Democrats however. That’s an important question since it looks like a landslide.

Massachusetts shows a slight lead by the Republican Scott Brown over Elisabeth Warren but with the latest gaffe from Warren we might be seeing a larger lead opening up. The Boston Globe has Brown over Warren by 2 and the Western New England University Polling Institute has him winning by 8.

In Missouri Democrat McCaskill is tied or behind each of her Republican challengers.

Virginia is close:

Virginia has become a very purple state that currently experiences small perturbations between reddish purple and blueish purple. While this only became apparent to some as a result of the 2006 and 2008 elections, it has been in the making for ten years and has accelerated over the last five. It is now fair to say, I believe, that Virginia has become a reasonable microcosm of the nation when you consider its rural Southern demographics combined with its bastions of younger, upscale educated professionals in its northern D.C. suburbs, it’s six-figure income families in the exurbs and outer-suburbs, the large middle class region of the Tidewater area, and a healthy portion of ethnic and racial minorities. The demographic trends are, and have been for some time, in favor of all but the rural Southern component. This has turned the state very purple and threatens to turn it blueish purple to light blue unless the GOP conducts itself in a manner acceptable to the growing demographic sectors and thus focuses on core issues of upward mobility, fiscal responsibility, and competent, prudent management of the government.

All of this is currently reflected in the standings of the presidential contest and the US Senate race. Most all polling to date shows Allen and Kaine essentially tied in the Senate contest

And finally in Wisconsin there are Democrats still battling it out to find out who will challenge Republican Scott Brown. So far it looks good:

Scott Walker (R-inc): 50
Tom Barrett (D): 45

Scott Walker (R-inc): 50
Kathleen Falk (D): 43

Scott Walker (R-inc): 51
Doug La Follette (D): 40

Scott Walker (R-inc): 50
Kathleen Vinehout (D): 38

Finally InTrade has the Republicans taking the Senate at 63%.

It’s going to be close, close, close and just one more reason we need to start focusing our time and effort on getting the Republican candidates over the top.

While I find Romney to be a poor Republican candidate, and not really a conservative at all, I find agreement with him on some issues and this one I do.

Yesterday Obama released the creepy slideshow “The Life of Julia” in which they depict how a female is taken care of from cradle to grave by the taxpayer. It’s a perfect example of the welfare state that is bankrupting this country. In the utopian world of Julia she gets money for college, for her medical bills, she gets to sue her employer for more money, she gets free contraception, loans for a business, and then some retirement money until she dies. Somehow Obama believes we will have the money for all that for the next 80 years.

It’s a tall tale for sure.

Rich Lowry

Julia’s central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.

The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked.

Her life is framed to show that she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her web-design job and go on unemployment, which President Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family’s income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans’ inveighing against the trend. These examples don’t suit the campaign’s purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn’t delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia’s birth-control pills free.

The point of view of “The Life of Julia” is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal — the economy, debt, the health of the culture.

Now where do I find agreement with Romney? Here he answers a question from a real version of Julia:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I agree with him, but does he really mean it? Romneycare may suggest otherwise.

Without a doubt one of the two must underrated sites on the internet is Intellectual Takeout. It’s a place where questions are answered filtering out the bias of the political spectrum. I love this site for the challenges it presents to its readers to think beyond themselves and their world view. A few days ago I stumbled upon a gem. It goes a long way into understanding what is bubbling in the belly of the Conservative political gut. It takes on Capitalism as preached by those in power and Capitalism as understood by the conservative/libertarian voter. They are definitely not the same animal.

The article “Free Market Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism” explores the difference and may be a look into the problem the Republican Party has in making inroads to Tea Party and Libertarian voters. They instinctively know the difference, while the Republican Party doesn’t seem to be able to acknowledge any difference at all. A quote from the article;

Unlike in a free market capitalist system, under crony capitalism it is often more profitable for businesses to spend resources lobbying legislators for handouts in the form of grants, loans, or tax advantages, and protections against competition in order to increase their profits. In turn, the government’s willingness to hand out special privileges promotes the politically well-connected rather than those who seek to earn the preference of investors and consumers based on merit.

The one failure of the article is that it moves forward citing demands by Occupy Wall Street protests as the only ones who understand the difference and are the only ones challenging this status-quo. That could not be further from the truth. The fact is that these people are Johnny Come Lately’s to the fight.

The Tea Party and Libertarians have been fighting Crony Capitalism for at least 3 years now. Some even longer. It’s not that Tea Party/Libertarian leaning people want others to be taxed at a higher rate or be regulated out of existence. It’s the influence of Crony Capitalism on policy and uses of elected officials to gain advantages single voters have no chance of getting that is the difference. Let us face facts, who is a politician going to be most influenced by:

A K Street lobbying firm who has resources bundling millions of dollars for a politicians election and also has members working inside these election campaigns. Some of these people are previous politicians who know the game, the players, and what it takes to get favorable policy passed.

Joe and Jane Doe who give what little they can afford because they believe in the promises of the politician at the time.

To pretend that there is no difference between the two examples is willful ignorance. This difference is what is holding back usually staunch Republicans and Conservatives from giving enthusiastic support to the party’s nominees. Most self-described Tea Party/Libertarians see this as fundamental to the reason why the government is broken, will not be fixed any time soon, and will continue to only get worse until people willing to make substantive change are able to be elected. Crony Capitalism has long ago been pointed out by these people as not a symptom of what ails our government, but its root cause. The promises of the Republican Party of fixing what is broke rings hollow to more and more people of conservative foundations. They are considered just as guilty of using Crony Capitalism as the Democrats party. Democrats use unions; Republicans use special interest lobbying firms. Both addicted to the money both of these entities provide in keeping them in power. Crony Capitalism is as far from Free Market Capitalism as football is to baseball. The only similarity is that they are both games that happen to share the same word.

The Republican Party has tried to condemn anyone who attacks the inbred form of Crony Capitalism they practice as an attack on Free Market Capitalism. They cannot allow there to be a distinction of the two and for years they were able to do so. Until the age of the internet. That has changed everything.

People now have a wealth of information literally at their fingertips. One of the most valuable things that the internet provides is a quick reference to voting histories, donation histories, promises made, and promises not kept. The line between Crony and Free Market Capitalism is not as easy to blur as it once was and is becoming clearer and clearer each election cycle. The history of promises and who gets the attention of politicians is able to plotted and viewed. People are designed to recognize patterns. It’s ingrained into our sub-conscious. It’s a function that we cannot escape or avoid. And patterns are forming. The pattern of Crony Capitalism is forever trending upward and the pattern for Free Market Capitalism is trending in its opposite direction.

Why?

P.S. The other most underrated site on the internet surely is Flopping Aces. I would be a fool to say otherwise for so many reasons.

In 1990 I knew everything I needed to know about Rush Limbaugh. He was a racist. He was sexist. He was an arrogant, rich SOB who didn’t care about the poor. He was a fool who knew nothing about how the world worked. How did I know these things despite never once having listened to his program? Via the media of course. Despite having a Bachelor’s in Political Science, I paid very little attention to actual politics. As a grad student I paid cursory attention to the news and didn’t much venture beyond what I saw on ABC news.

One day while arguing about Limbaugh something of an epiphany was forced on me by my roommate. He simply asked, “Have you ever actually listened to him?” As I stammered a bit I had to admit that I had not. It dawned on me that I was speaking quite authoritatively about someone I knew so little about… Hence the epiphany. Not about the nature of Limbaugh, but rather about the notion of taking what media says about someone or something as gospel. Today I take virtually everything I hear or read with a grain of salt. When possible I compare what I’ve heard with what I know firsthand. When that’s not possible I make sure that I look to sources I trust for corroboration.

As for Limbaugh, I started listening to him and it took a while for him to grow on me. At first blush he’s rather bombastic and just a wee bit arrogant. After a while however it became clear that at the core, he is, as he puts it “Right, 99.7% of the time”. One might not always appreciate his particular brand of commentary, but, far more often than not he is spot on in terms of the point he is making.

To this day, despite having the most popular and profitable radio program in the United States, Limbaugh remains a polarizing figure. He is a convenient lightning rod for the left as they seek to mischaracterize the conservative message he promotes. And they have done a great job of disparaging conservatives. From a sexist Rush Limbaugh to the Tea Party racists to Paul Ryan seeking to throw Grandma off a cliff, the left in general and the media in particular have done a spectacular job of misrepresenting conservatives to those who are like I was twenty years ago, too busy or lazy to look at the facts.

As such I’d like to provide a little reality to the way conservatives are characterized.

Myth: Conservatives hate government and want to get rid of it.
Reality: Conservatives know you need government, just not big government. They believe that government should be small and should do only those things for which it is Constitutionally empowered. Conservatives believe that citizens, either individually, as part of a family or a community or even as owners of corporations can make better decisions than government can. This does not suggest that conservatives believe that everything works perfectly without government. They simply believe that government is a poor vehicle with which to address most problems.

Myth: Conservatives are racists.
Reality: Conservatives focus on the rule of law and individual responsibility. Conservatives generally oppose affirmative action programs not because they hate minorities, but rather they believe in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. that Americans should “Not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Conservatives don’t believe that government contracts or school admissions should be forced to reflect the specific demographic makeup of the United States any more than the NBA or NHL should be.

Myth: Conservatives don’t care about the poor.
Reality: Conservatives care greatly about the poor and needy, they just don’t think government is the solution to the myriad problems that the poor face. Indeed, in his 2007 book “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism” Arthur C. Brooks shows that conservatives, or people who disagree with this statement, “The government has a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can’t take care of themselves,” are 27 percent more likely to give to charity than liberals. Conservatives don’t hate the poor, they simply don’t believe that failed government redistribution programs are the way to lift people out of poverty.
They believe that communities and churches and private organizations would do a far better job.

Myth: Conservatives love big business.
Reality: Conservatives certainly love business because they recognize that America’s capitalist system has generated more wealth and improved the condition of man more than any other economic system in the history of the world. However, conservatives are actually frequently at odds with big business because of the cozy relationships big, established businesses often nurture with politicians and bureaucrats to the disadvantage of their smaller competitors. Conservatives would rather see big companies go bankrupt so that their assets can be rationalized rather than having the government support them and distort the markets. Failure and reinvention are, after all, at the core of economic success.

Myth: Conservatives want to destroy education in the United States.
Reality: Conservatives want their children and grandchildren and friends’ children educated as much as anyone. Conservatives simply don’t want the government running the education industrial complex. They look at the skyrocketing costs, unaccountable bureaucracies and abysmal performance records in the country’s public schools and believe a free market provides a far better opportunity for students to get a good education.

There are of course many other myths the left has successfully propagated about conservatives that have manifested themselves into our political landscape. That’s a problem for conservatives in general and in particular for the kinda / sort of conservative Mittens Romney. The economic foundation of the United States is not going to be saved by simply putting Barack Obama in the unemployment line, although that is certainly a necessary first step…

Rolling back the government and unleashing the economic might of the United States is going to take a conservative Congress sufficiently motivated to make the hard choices and be willing to bear the arrows of a cornered left. And this is where the tire hits the road. Conservatives have to stop allowing the left to define what conservatism means. Rush does a great job of energizing the base, but the reality is not everyone is lucky enough to get pushed into an epiphany as I was. Not everyone will be on board with everything in the conservative agenda, but 90% agreement is better than 10%… at least then we’d still have a country to talk about.

Conservatives must make crystal clear the choices Americans face. It’s not between mending Medicare and killing Grandma. It’s not between closing the Department of Education and illiterate children. It’s not between cutting taxes and starving the homeless. It’s between the Republic and failure. Conservatives need to take a page from the dairy farmers with their Got Milk moustaches and tee shirts. Find an engaging and compelling meme to highlight the conservative message and invite Americans to understand what it means. If you get people talking about the real issues then the possibility exists to bring them over from the dark side. I wonder how James Earl Jones would look in a “got conservative” tee shirt…

Over the course of the last ten years millions of brave men and women have served in the United States military. Those people, those fathers, mothers, sons and daughters deserve every ounce of respect that Americans of all stripes have.

It says a lot about both the country and these individuals that they still see something in the United States worth defending and that they were willing to sign on the dotted line to do so.

Unfortunately, that is simply not enough. Not that those brave men and women aren’t giving enough, but rather, the great sacrifice they have been and are making today is simply not sufficient to save the United States.

The United States is far more than a military power. In reality, military power is but a small part of what makes America great and a leader in the world. People around the planet have been flocking to watch Hollywood movies for decades. They’ve also been sending the best and the brightest of their progeny to study at our universities. During the Cold War it was Levis and Pepsi that Soviet citizens were clamoring for. According to Interbrand, ten of the ten most valuable consumer brands in the world are American, including names like Coke, Disney, McDonalds and Google. None of these things were accomplished with a barrel of a gun. From Star Wars to Big Macs to our private and public universities, people around the world see the United States as a place where seemingly everything is possible, where great ideas come from and where anyone can find success. Little of that is the result of American military intervention. It’s the result of accomplishments and achievements Americans have forged throughout the nation’s history… although winning two world wars certainly didn’t hurt.

The bottom line is, the United States’ military is strong because America is strong. Not the other way around. And what has made America strong is her people, the individual freedom and liberty they have enjoyed since June 21, 1788 and the economic strength that freedom has created.

Unfortunately the liberty and economic strength that underlie two centuries of success are under assault today like they have never been before. As much as I dislike Barack Obama, the blame is not all his. He may be the worst president this country has ever had, but the problem that is undermining the foundation of American greatness has been going on for seven decades. No, the majority of the blame does not fall on the shoulders of Barack Obama, or even the collective presidents of the last 70 years… The fault for the situation we find ourselves in is the fault of the American people.

A free people get the government they deserve and we are to blame for what Barack Hussein Obama has wrought as well as what George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and their predecessors did. Government is a dangerous weapon in the hands of mere mortals with their natural failings of greed, vanity, arrogance and avarice among others. Our Constitution was specifically designed to temper the worst inclinations of men and to limit the scope to which a citizen’s life might be impacted by government action. Staggered terms, a Senate appointed by state legislatures, an independent judiciary a bill of rights. Everything in our Constitution was written to give citizens the greatest degree of liberty possible.

None of that matters when the government simply decides it wants more power and the people do nothing to stop it, or as in the case of the 17th Amendment, assist in the takeover. A government of men can be expected to try and expand its power and reach and James Madison’s Constitution and George Mason’s Bill of Rights were intended to stop such expansion.

Today however both might as well have been written on an Etch-a-Sketch. How does this happen? Simple. Two symbiotic developments resulted in the situation we find ourselves in today. The first is the division of labor. When Cyrus McCormick freed mankind from the yoke of the farm he unleashed a parabolic curve of innovation such as the world had never seen. The specialization wrought an increase in the standard of living that was exponentially more powerful than anything that had come before. Simultaneously Americans began to enjoy something that few people in the world had ever enjoyed and no people had had on that scale: leisure time.

The division of labor meant that while citizens were able to focus on their jobs stamping engine blocks, editing books, testing scientific theories or flipping burgers, everything else was magically available to them at far less than it would cost them to produce or procure on their own. As their lives became more silo like, they began to understand less and less about things with which they had little contact. For a while they relied on family, friends and community organizations to help fill in the gaps. Then government stepped in and decreed that it was their job to tell citizens what was good and what was bad and what needed to be done, when, and by who. Government is, after all, there to help… isn’t it?

Then of course there is the money. Government largesse becomes a powerful weapon when combined with citizen’s ignorance. As government started providing more information and benefits it started issuing more and more regulations. Today we have the situation where the government seeks to control virtually every aspect of a citizen’s life. Indeed, half the population pays no income taxes, one third of the population relies on the government for most if not all of their income while the entire population is burdened with regulations around every corner. This regulation is particularly onerous to entrepreneurs and businessmen, the backbone of American progress.

Today, with individual liberty and capitalism under fire, the foundation of American greatness is withering away like the grains of sand through an hourglass. The question is, can the country be turned before the sand is fully drained? This is one battle that the men and women of the military cannot fight for us. This is a battle that will be fought in the voting booths across the country. But the real battle is going to go on long before November 6th. The question is, are you going to join the battle? How far are you willing to go to preserve the greatest nation in the history of the world? Politics is rarely a pretty thing and sometimes it causes real pain when you disagree with people close to you. Such is life. Would you rather keep the peace with your brother in law or friend at the cost of watching everything you hold dear slip away, or do you want to take a chance and try and change someone’s mind? It may not work. You might end up talking to yourself or having someone yelling at you. The battle between now and November 6th is not a hot war like what is going on in Afghanistan, but it no less important.

The pending nomination of Mitt Romney demonstrates that conservatives cannot depend on the GOP to light a fire under the American people about the dangers of the leftist agenda and profligate spending. The danger posed by your mother in law or your best friend are nothing compared to the Taliban or Al Qaeda and the other real dangers our men and women in uniform face every day. How much are you willing to do to make sure that their sacrifice is not in vain? Are you willing to do what it takes to help send the Democrats home? Are you willing to do what it takes to help put the United States back on track to greatness and prosperity? Pick up the phone, buy your buddy a beer. Start a conversation. Have a dinner party. Post something on Facebook. At some point someone has to do it. If not you, who? If not now, when? How much is your country really worth? How much are you willing to do for her? Are you going to sit back and watch as the sands of liberty and prosperity pass or is a free Republic worth fighting for? Twenty years from now when someone asks you what were you doing during the most important election of your lifetime, what do you want to be able to say? Do the things today that you will be proud to speak of tomorrow… make a difference, help save your country.

Shake Shake Shake! Shake Your Romney! Shake Your Romney!

Thank you Mr. Fehrnstrom for saying out loud and confirming exactly what many conservative new long ago; Mitt Romney is promising to conservatives whatever it is that he thinks they want to hear without any intention of keeping it. The only thing shocking about this revelation is that Eric Fehrnstromn said it out loud, not in a conversation he believed was off the record or private, cut being broadcast by CNN live.

In case you haven’t heard what the kerfuffle is all about , here’s the interview of Mr. Fehrnstrom on CNN and the quote Team Romney is trying to spin away:

JOHN FUGELSANG (CNN): “Is there a concern that [Rick] Santorum and [Newt] Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election?”

FEHRNSTROM: “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all of over again. But I will say, if you look at the exit polling data in Illinois, you’ll see that Mitt Romney is broadly acceptable to most of the factions in the party. You have to do that in order to become the nominee…”

Immediately Team Romney went into damage control and assuming everyone else is either an idiot or will not see the full comment in context has Mitt Romney himself respond with:

“I can tell you this, when the campaign moves to becoming a general election campaign, the nature of the campaign itself in terms of staff, funding, the states we’d go to will be different than today, obviously, It’s a much larger campaign fundraising numbers are very different, we now work with the Republican National Committee instead of apart from any committee of that nature. So organizationally a general election campaign takes on a different profile.”

Anyone who has achieved a reading comprehension level of grade four or higher can clearly see what Fehrnstrom said and what Romney tells you he said are completely different and not only from a different point of view, but a completely different reality constructed for the lone purpose of Romney to hid away in.

Many will say that this is standard operating procedure for candidates in the primary. To that I say that those of us looking for actual change in Washington; yeah we know. And that’s the point. What promise is Romney making to conservatives now that he has no intention of keeping?

Repealing ObamaCare…Shake Shake Shake

Tougher stance on illegal immigration…Shake Shake Shake

Cutting taxes…Shake Shake Shake

Only in the twisted world of Washington D.C. politics is this considered common practice and not, to quote Joe Biden, “a big effing deal”.

If only conservatives could just Shake Shake Shake this primary away and start the Republican primary over with a new blank gray screened Etch-A-Sketch.

Leftists and conservatives will all argue that they support the freedom to live their lives as they choose. Like anything else in life, the devil is in the details and when you probe further you find a fundamental difference in what is defined as freedom. In a recent blog post discussing the difference between the Tea Party movement versus Occupy Wall Street, Flopping Aces’ guest writer johngalt gave an excellent summary:

“I believe that the two differing groups have vastly different ideas on how freedom and liberty are achieved, and, in essence, who has the responsibility for making a person’s freedom and liberty a reality.”

(Addressing the demands of the OWS) “These “demands” all have one thing in common. That is, the removal of responsibility to individuals over their own lives. Even the requests for spending money on “ecological restoration” removes their own responsibility over the environment they can affect, dumping it on someone else. To put it quite simply, in order to attain what the OWS movement sees as freedom and liberty, their demands only “liberate” themselves from personal responsibility.”

And after summing up core Tea Party principles – “The TEA party groups universally espouse Personal Responsibility over one’s own life. Which means, that when a TEA party member starts to talk about freedom and liberty, they are not talking about imposing upon another person to provide for that freedom and liberty, but rather, that each person take their own responsibility over their lives.”

That sums up the philosophies nicely, and I can break it down into even simpler terms. If an act involves the freedom to insert something into your body or somebody else’s for pleasure, the leftist will choose the option that offers greater freedom. Freedoms that entail responsibility for one’s actions will fall onto the side of the conservative.

There is one exception I can see to this that does not fall squarely into either camp, and I want to briefly examine it before we go any further. I am, of course, talking about gay marriage. On the surface, this looks like a no brainer that conservatives seek to restrict the freedom of consenting adults. When you dig deeper though, there is more to it. A good portion of conservatives (including your author) actually favor civil unions (43% conservative GOP, 59% Mod/Lib GOP, 54% Cons/Mod Dems). It is ridiculous that two consenting adults who love each other shouldn’t be able to enjoy all of the legal benefits that their hetero counterparts do simply because their brains are wired to be attracted to the same gender. Where the line gets drawn is with marriage because marriage itself has a deep meaning within their religion. If you think that sex is no different than race look no further than my analogy regarding gays in the military. The other issue that conservatives have is that it also leads to the state using it to impose its will on its citizens. It’s not homophobic to think that Kindergarten is too young to start teaching children about sex or that forcing the church out of the adoption business is a good idea. This topic warrants its own post, but I needed to discuss it before going any further.

Back to the original point, what are the topics where the leftists will favor greater personal freedom over the right? Simply put, any involving sex, drugs, or alcohol. This is not to say that granting such individual freedoms would be a bad thing. Reforming our drug laws will get quite a few people out of prison and reduce a slew of law enforcement costs, not to mention allowing society to focus treatment on addicts rather than punishment. Are there negative sides to this? Absolutely. The same with sex – there is no reason why the government should interfere in personal relationships provided they do not cause harm to others. Unfortunately, the left never knows when to stop, and suddenly it is a right to have someone else pay for your contraceptives, morning after abortifacients and sterilization services. What the left fails to realize is that having access to something does not constitute the right to have it paid for by someone else. Again, conservatives will for the most part support a woman’s right to access to these services, but draw the line when suddenly the First Amendment to the Constitution is trumped by your need for pleasure. And there are also legitimate medical reasons for these services – some women take the pill to help fight conditions they may have or may need a hysterectomy, and few conservatives will oppose these. They just don’t want to be forced to pay for your weekend romp.

Now look at the other side, and where conservatives desire freedom. Theirs are the ones that our president laments as “negative freedoms:”

• Freedom to defend yourself and your family
• Freedom to not have the state impose on your religious beliefs
• Freedom to choose where your children go to school
• Freedom to decide how your retirement is funded
• Freedom to make the choices over your personal health care

In each one of these the conservative seeks freedom from the state to make choices over the major decisions over their lives, where those of the left focus on their pursuit of pleasure. One wants the freedom to live and grow and take responsibility for one’s life, where the other only looks at short term happiness. Also ironic that for all that leftists claim to love freedom, in each of the bullet points above the leftist happily surrenders his freedom to the state in return for absolution from responsibility for his actions. The conservative freedoms also come with great responsibility, and they not only willingly accept them, but vehemently fight for the freedom to fail.

The leftists can argue that each of those negative freedoms cuts both ways:

• Gun control will protect you and your family from gun-wielding criminals
• The church has no business being granted any kind of exemption from laws of the land that the rest of the citizens live under.
• What is to stop people from using vouchers to send their children to poorly run schools, or to use the extreme example, a school whose teachings are based on White Supremacy?
• What happens to the person who put their entire 401(k) into Enron stock?
• What recourse does a citizen have against an insurance company that rejects their expensive health care claim or they exceed their cap and are forced into bankruptcy over a medical condition?

These are valid questions, and any one of them is worthy of its own post debating the various arguments. But back to my main point, in each of the leftist arguments you are entrusting the state to make the best decision over your life in dealing with these issues. Each one of these issues can be answered with individual freedom and free markets. At the end of the day, it comes down to one simple question: Who do you most trust to make the most important decisions over your life – you, or the state? I know where I stand – where do you?

Crossposted from Brother Bobs Blog

Here is what Democrats want us to think: Republican candidates are going to take away your contraceptive pills; they are going to go on some jihad against you in the bedroom, and the only salvation is reelecting Barack Obama.

First of all, Obama cannot run on his record. The last thing that he wants you to think about is what he has done while in office. He does not want you to think about Obamacare, because it has continued to remain unpopular, even to today. Now, they will continue to try to sell Obamacare is becoming more popular, but Democrats do not want to carry this flag into the main election.

Whereas Newt Gingrich is going to tell you over and over again that he is the only person on the ticket to ever balance the budget in our lifetimes, Democrats are not going to tout the passage of Obamacare as a great reason to vote for them.

What else have they done? They passed the Stimulus package, which was supposed to reverse the recession. More people believe that Elvis is alive than believe that the Stimulus package worked. Democrat Evan Bayh, when retiring said that if he created one job when he entered into the private sector that would be more than Congress has created in the previous six months.

Are Democrats going to run on the various omnibus bills that they have passed? Yes, at $1.1 trillion for one 2010 bill alone that was 2000 pages long, Dems do not want you to think about that.

Can Obama run on ending the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq? These wars have degenerated into chaos under his watch.

Most people who pay some attention to politics know the numbers:

It doesn’t matter if Obama is at fault here or not; under his watch, things have gotten worse, not better, and he has spent huge sums of money from many generations to come in order to “fix” the U.S. economy.

Both the media and the Obama administration have tried to paint the economy as improving, but a lot of Americans aren’t buying it.

So, what remains are wedge issues and personal attacks. The media managed to drive Herman Cain out of the Republican race and Sarah Palin out of elective office and apparently, out of elective office aspirations.
What the democratic party knows is, there are a lot of voters out there who barely pay attention. Huge numbers of people voted for Obama, and yet had no clue about him or the other candidates. Some young people simply voted for Obama because he was cool and McCain was this doddering old man.

So Obama needs to capture these votes and to do it with manufactured controversies.

The controversy of the last month has been contraception.

Although Republicans are continually blamed for raising this issue, it actually first occurred in a Republican debate, brought up by George Stephanopoulos on January 7^th, a former Clinton aide.

He said the question was a joke. He and Diane Sawyer had a bet that Stephanopoulos could make Romney say, “Contraceptives are working just fine.” A few days earlier, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Rick Santorum questions about state regulation of birth control.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, President Obama made to sovereign decision that some Catholic institutions must pay for forms of birth control including the morning after pill. When this became plainly unpopular, the President proposed a compromise, which did not come from any sort of discussion with the Catholic entities about a compromise.

The compromise is, insurance companies will now give out free contraception, which is essentially free to the insurance companies, even though it costs a huge amount of money to individuals (which stories generally ignore that contraceptive pills from WalMart can cost as little as $5–$15/month). And, to liberals, this makes complete sense. If the government requires it to be paid, then it’s free; if a person pays for it individually, the costs are beyond that person’s ability to pay.

Then there is the liberal operative at the Georgetown School of Law, Sandra Fluke [pronounced flook]. There are all kinds of law schools out there and there are a number of different medical plans, yet this woman chose to go to Georgetown, where there are some limits on contraceptive coverage. She said she is attending Jesuit Law School in her testimony. She is concerned that she and others who have spoken to her must come up with $3000 for contraception (which appears to be over the period of time that she is enrolled in school). She claims that contraception is not easily available elsewhere, that they are under crushing demand.

Fluke is a reasonable speaker, but her examples were weird. One woman, after being raped, did not go to her medical provider because she figured they would not help her. Another example was a woman who used birth control for other reasons, and received the birth control, even though maybe it might be denied.

Her primary point was, she should be able to get the coverage that she wants—including free birth control—at a Catholic University, no matter what.

I am certainly not an expert in the female reproductive system. However, it would make sense that, if a woman needed birth control pills for a reason other than birth control, that would be easily verifiable. It appears as though that was not really an issue, even though many people are arguing that is the main issue, where one person actually argued that more people took birth control to prevent ovarian cancer than took it for birth control.

What we have here is a typical Democratic issue. “I am a victim; my friends are victims. This is what we want; we should get it without any hassle or any extra cost.” And Democrats come to her aid, thankful to talk about anything other than the debt, the deficit and unemployment.

As a side note, Rush Limbaugh made light of this, which he often does, illustrating absurdity by being absurd (Rush has since formally apologized for his language and characterization of Fluke). However, in between the absurdity, Rush also throws in some actual information.

As Rush Limbaugh said 2 weeks ago: “The Democrats don’t have one thing they can run on. There’s not one aspect of Obama’s first term that they can say, ‘If you want four more years of this, vote for us.’ They have to create fear, hatred, loathing, impugn the character, all that, of Republicans — and that’s what they do.”

This will be in Conservative Review #218

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