Powerless we are – for now; and an idea matched with truth will eventually have all the power in the world:

All 40 Republican members of the Senate sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday asking him to hold health care negotiations in “the light of day.”

“In the coming weeks, we ask for increased transparency in the process of merging the House-passed bill and the Senate-passed bill,” the letter said. “Closed door negotiations and unprecedented special provisions in exchange for votes do not meet the expectations of the American people.”

At best, Democrats might give us some window dressing on transparency – but I doubt we’ll see even that. It must be kept in mind that all Democrat rhetoric about being for the little guy; about being for clean government; about being other than ruthless, corrupt and greedy political whores is just that – so much rhetoric. They don’t care about us and don’t care about America – they only care about their own power and wealth. What they are doing behind closed doors is working things out to maximize both wealth and power for themselves – if someone manages to get some health care out of the deal,that is ok…but its not the primary concern.

Its hard to condemn a whole group of people, but the plain fact of the matter is that for decades there has been an increasing tendency to this sort of self-serving corruption and as Democrats have not been held accountable in the MSM or by rank-and-file Democrats there has been no means of checking or correcting this tendency. Only massive, crushing defeat coupled with an internal, Democrat demand for honesty will fix the problem in the Democrat party.

Meanwhile, we sit here suffering the effects of having an irresponsible and corrupt political class governing our nation. All will be set right in the end, but we’ll have some pretty bad times before then. Let this be a lesson to us to move ruthlessly against the least manifestation of corruption in politics. Policies may be good or bad, but if they are at least honestly arrived at, they won’t be nearly as bad as bad policies coupled with bad hearts.

2010 is not going to be a good year to be a RINO in any way, shape or form:

Senator John McCain’s future in the U.S. Senate may be a little less assured than previously thought.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely 2010 Republican Primary voters in Arizona finds the longtime incumbent in a virtual tie with potential challenger J.D. Hayworth. McCain earns 45% of the vote, while Hayworth picks up 43%.

J. D. Hayworth is a former House member, defeated in the 2006 GOP route. In other words, he might have many fine qualities, but he’s not the sort of man one would think a strong challenger to a war hero, known-by-everyone, easily-reelected-for-ages Senator. But, he is. Why? Because McCain has flirted many times with RINOism, and the people are tired of that.

In the end, I expect McCain to tack far enough right to secure the GOP nomination and he’ll probably then cruise to re-election – but the warning is out there: RINOs are an endangered species.

Probably – because we used to call them “liberal Republicans”, now we call them “moderate Republicans” but mostly what it amounts to is “Republicans we can’t rely upon in a crisis” – anyways, looks like there’s a chance Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) might bolt:

Senator Snowe’s mid-week remarks on her place in a changing GOP might seem tame. Snowe, a moderate Republican and senior senator from Maine, stated that “I haven’t changed as a Republican, I think more that my party has changed.” The comments came in an interview with John Harwood on CNBC. Citing the full quotation might be a useful background for the analysis that follows. Asked why she was a Republican, she answered:

Well, you know, it’s — I’ve always been a Republican for the traditional principles that have been associated with the Republican Party since I, you know, became a Republican when I registered to vote. And that is limited, you know, limited government, individual opportunities, fiscal responsibility, and a strong national defense. So I think that those principles have always been a part of the Republican Party heritage, and I believe that I, you know, reflect those views. And I haven’t changed as a Republican, I think more that my party has changed.

The MSM and the left eats this stuff up – here’s the supposed real-deal for the GOP: if only we’d all be more like her, we’d be able to get ahead! Its the endless refrain – if only we GOPers would become more liberal, all would be well. Of course, its all bull – and Snowe makes a liar out of herself in her own statement. If she’s for limited government and fiscal responsibility, then why did she vote for Obama’s Spendulus package? That is the definition of fiscally irresponsible big government.

There has to be room for dissenting voices in the GOP – but there must also be a certain cohesiveness to the party. One certain, crucial issues, a person has to either be with the party, or not in the party at all. Voting for the Spendulus wasn’t just another vote on another spending bill – it was a major, early victory for Barack Obama and the liberals in Congress. What the heck did we get in return for all our efforts to elect and re-elect Snowe? It didn’t help us at the moment we really needed it. And now we’re supposed to help re-elect her, again? Why? So she can cut us off at the knees one more time?

There is talk of finding a primary challenger for Snowe – and I hope we get one. Senator Snowe needs to learn that if she takes our sweat and our money, we expect at least a modicum of party discipline in return. At the bare minimum, no GOPer should be the vote which hands a signal victory to the liberals we all – moderates and conservatives – oppose. She doesn’t have to be a Republican – she’s free to switch to Democrat or Independent…but if she wants to be part of us, then we expect her to return the favor.

No more Specters in our party – no more RINOs. We’re Republicans – we range from rock ribbed conservatives like Sen. Jim DeMint (100% ACU rating) to fairly liberal Republicans like Rudi Giuliani…room at the table for all sorts, but no room for those who would betray us.

To win would be to hold the seat, but this could also be a sign that the GOP is starting a resurgence in the northeast:

Republican Kelly Ayotte leads Democrat Paul Hodes by eight points in an early look at New Hampshire’s 2010 race for the U.S. Senate.

The first Rasmussen Reports survey of the race to fill the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Senator Judd Gregg shows Ayotte ahead 46% to 38%.

Five percent (5%) of New Hampshire voters prefer some other candidate, and 12% are undecided.
Ayotte, the state’s attorney general from 2004 until her resignation in July, captures 81% of the Republican vote, and Hodes, a two-term member of the U.S. House, earns the identical number (81%) of Democratic votes. Among voters not affiliated with either party, Ayotte leads by 14 points.

The independents are the key number here – lost them by 14 points, and you can’t win. From all polling that I’ve seen, independents are starting to swing back to the GOP out of dismay for the harsh, leftist politics emanating from the Democrat Congress and White House. They voted for moderate hope and change, they’ve got hard left, hard ball, corruption-as-usual politics…and the Democrats might pay a very high price next year for this failure to live up to their campaign rhetoric.

Obama needs at least a few GOPers to sign on to his big government health care scam in order that when it falls apart, Democrats won’t bear 100% of the blame, and it looks like that prospect is fading:

Sen. Orrin Hatch said Wednesday he has withdrawn from a bipartisan Senate group that is negotiating legislation to overhaul the health-care system.

Mr. Hatch (R., Utah) is one of four Republicans that began negotiating with the aim of reaching bipartisan agreement on a bill. However, of the four, he had been considered the least likely to support a final product. Talks are continuing to try to get Sens. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa); Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) to throw their support behind the package.

“It’s going to be difficult for me to support what they are talking about, so I’d rather be upfront about it,” Mr. Hatch told reporters after a Senate vote. He said he informed Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.), who has been leading the so-called group of seven, of his decision Wednesday.

Snowe (R-ME) will be the hardest to detach – but if we can get it down to just her, then no matter how they slice and dice it, they won’t have anything bi-partisan about their bill. If we are to have this hopelessly corrupt, anti-common sense and un-American plan shoved down our throats, then let us hang the dead-certain miserable results on the Democrats.

UPDATE: Catholic Bishops condemn Obamacare over its stealth-provisions for federally funded abortion on demand.

Many have been wondering when the U.S. bishops would comment on the Obama health care plan — given that it contains abortion coverage.

Well, their statement has finally arrived. It comes in the form of a letter from Bishop William F. Murphy of Rockville Center to all the members of Congress.

Bishop Murphy writes as chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

“No health care plan should compel us or others to pay for the destruction of human life, whether through government funding or mandatory coverage of abortion. Any such action would be morally wrong,” writes Bishop Murphy.

The bishops have been lobbying for universal health care for many years, thus the letter from Bishop Murphy contains many specific proposals they would like to see incorporated into the legislation. For example, Bishop Murphy asks for a repeal of the five-year waiting period for legal immigrants to receive Medicaid benefits.

I included that last bit – the desire to cover legal immigrants from day one – because I wanted to point out that the Catholic Bishops have been in favor of a universal health care for a long time, including a sort of coverage many liberals oppose. Well, here it is, and the Bishops have been forced to oppose an age-old dream because fanatics on the left are inserting anti-life provisions. Point blank, no one really knows what is in this dog of a bill – and that is how Obama and his Democrats wish it to remain…just pass the blasted thing, and then Obama will tell us what he finds in there.

Nothing doing, Barry.

UPDATE II: Nancy Pelosi says she’s got the votes. Yeah, whatever.

Good man:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will formally announce his opposition to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in a floor speech on Monday, July 20. The following are unembargoed excerpts from his prepared remarks:

“From the beginning of this confirmation process, I’ve said that Americans expect one thing when they walk into a court room, whether it’s a traffic court or the Supreme Court — and that’s equal treatment under the law. Over the years, Americans have accepted significant ideological differences in the kinds of men and women that various presidents have nominated to the Supreme Court. But one thing Americans will never tolerate in a nominee is a belief that some groups are more deserving of a fair shake than others. Nothing could be more offensive to the American sensibility than that. Judge Sotomayor is a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background. But above all else, a judge must check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice even-handedly, as the judicial oath requires.”

“Judge Sotomayor’s record of written statements suggest an alarming lack of respect for the notion of equal justice, and therefore, in my view, an insufficient willingness to abide by the judicial oath…”

Sotomayor is manifestly unqualified to be on any court, let alone the Supreme Court (yes, liberals, I know she advanced under GOP Presidents, too…but using that as some sort of “gotcha” against GOP opposition to her appointment just shows you are either (a) liars or (b) entirely ignorant about how judicial nominations are done). Senator McConnell has done the right thing, and I hope he manages to convince the entire Senate GOP to vote against. We can’t stop this unqualified person from sitting on our Supreme Court, but we can register our disdain for the racial pandering Obama is using in this Supreme Court nomination in order to secure a lock-step, leftist vote on the Court.

Nevada’s junior Senator, John Ensign (R), has admitted to an affair:

Calling it “absolutely the worst thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” U.S. Sen. John Ensign admitted Tuesday he had an affair with a campaign staffer last year.

“If there was ever anything that I could take back in my life, this would be it,” Ensign, 51, said Tuesday afternoon in Las Vegas, reading from a prepared statement in a brief news conference at which he took no questions.

The Nevada Republican, a leading conservative voice in his party who has been listed as possible presidential material, indicated he plans to remain in office and that his wife of 21 years, Darlene, is standing by him.

The woman and her husband “were both close friends, and they both worked for me,” Ensign said.

Ensign had the affair, from December 2007 to August 2008, with a woman who worked for his Senate campaign and his political action committee. The woman’s husband, meanwhile, worked in Ensign’s Senate office, according to an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.

I’ve never met John Ensign, but I have voted for him – a total of three times. In each of these votes, I was confident that I was voting for a man of integrity who could be relied upon to do the right thing. I didn’t expect perfection, but I did expect Ensign to be a man of wisdom, judgment and honor. And now I find out that I cast my vote for a man who didn’t just have sex with a subordinate, didn’t just cheat on his wife, didn’t just betray a good friend, but did all three of these things at once. “Lack of judgment” doesn’t even begin to cover what we have here.

John Ensign is 51 years old; he has been married for 22 years; he has three children; he has substantial wealth; he has the respect of his family, friends, fellow Nevadans and even his political opponents…he, in a word, has it all. Whatever a man can need for happiness, God has granted it to John Ensign. And what does John Ensign do with this great, good fortune? He decides that having sex with someone other than his wife who is married to one of his very best friends is more important than honorably discharging the duties incumbent upon a man who has achieved such a station in life.

As to what this will mean in Ensign’s personal life, I cannot say and would not say – that is between Mr and Mrs Ensign and my prayer is that Ensign will show proper humility and Mrs. Ensign will find it in her heart to forgive a horrid betrayal. A family break up is always a sad thing and no matter what pain Senator Ensign has caused, the best thing is for he and his family to remain united as he works through his failure and developes better moral sense and stronger wisdom to prevent a recurrence. Thing is, while Senator Ensign is doing this, he will not be able to properly discharge his duties as a United States Senator and senior leader of the Republican Party. Sad as I am about it, Senator Ensign has to take a sabbatical from public life and deal with his personal life – he should resign from the Senate forthwith and allow a Republican governor to select an honorable person who can devote themselves full time to the needs of the State of Nevada.

We all fail from time to time – and the larger the failure and the higher one’s station in life, the more serious is the failure. This is why we’re supposed to select men and women of strong judgment and character to be our leaders – a flighty youth all too easily falls for temptation. Its a pity that Senator Ensign decided to eschew his 51 years of life and all he’s learned in order that he might have sex with someone he knew full well – before, during and after – he should not have had sex with. Until Senator Ensign can demonstrate to the electorate of Nevada that the lack of judgment which led him to this failure has been corrected, he cannot be entrusted with the awesome responsibilities which come with the office of Senator. Ensign can still have a very bright future in politics – but not right now; maybe in a few years. We’ll have to see.

As a people, we’ve for too long allowed this sort of thing to pass without any consequences. Its all supposedly private and we’re supposed to step back and allow the erring politician time to revamp is life. Well, that is backwards – it is the fallen politician who is to step back and allow someone else to take the burden; hopefully someone who adheres to the basic rules about marital fidelity. The cost of infidelity must be a requirement to surrender office. A man who can betray his wife is not a man we can currently trust to carry out the people’s business – let such a man off the hook, and he’ll just keep doing it, arrogantly assuming he’s invincible. Senator Ensign is not invincible – he’s just a man, and he needs to work on things, as a man, not as a Senator.

Nevada’s other Senator – the good one – John Ensign is showing up in Iowa:

As the Des Moines Register pointed out, it barely mattered that Sen. John Ensign (R., Nev.), visiting Iowa yesterday, said flatly, “I’m not running for president in 2012.” It barely mattered that he failed to contact or meet with the state GOP chairman. His appearance in Iowa nonetheless set off a wave of 2012 speculation.

If Ensign is indeed running-by-not-running (which is not unprecedented — Barack Obama did the same thing beginning in November 2004), then he needs to show his face early on in Iowa.

“I think he’s doing the right thing,” says Matt Leonardo, an Iowa campaigner from last year, of Ensign’s (R., Nev.) trip to the heartland. Leonardo’s firm, Revolution Media Group, hasn’t taken a side yet for 2012, but he says that his 2008 client, Fred Thompson, learned the hard way what Ensign (perhaps), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), and other early Iowa visitors seem to grasp.

“You have to be there, to make the positive connection,” he said. “You can’t just drop in around election time with a huge media campaign. People in Iowa expect you to meet them, to shake their hands.”

Senator Ensign is a good man and has ably represented the people of Nevada in the United States Senate, but I don’t know of any grand theme he would have for a Presidential run – other than not being part of the power structure in the public mind, which might be the whole point. After all, I know of at least one other guy who is planning a political campaign partially on the theme of not being one of “them” who have screwed up the whole country. We’ll have to see where this leads.

This can’t be giving him the warm fuzzies:

Arizona Republican voters don’t see Senator John McCain having much trouble winning the GOP Senate Primary next year, but 50% believe he has lost touch with his party’s base. Conservatives are even more critical of the longtime incumbent.

While McCain’s prospective GOP primary challenger – Minute Man Chris Simcox – has a great deal of name-recognition problems, the fact that half of GOP voters in Arizona are viewing McCain as out of touch indicates that Simcox, and others, have an opportunity to topple McCain in the primary.

I backed McCain against Obama in 2008 primarily because McCain would fight to win the War on Terrorism and, also, had a chance at re-forging our national unity, so badly shaken by opportunistic Democrats and anti-American leftists. While Obama has made some good moves in the national security area, I’m still greatly concerned by other decisions and worry, mostly, that Obama lacks the plain grit necessary to see us through hard times on the battlefield. Time will tell on that – Truman eventually showed he had some guts when it came to confronting America’s enemies, maybe Obama will, too. All in all, I still believe my vote in November was the correct one – McCain could not have made our economic mess any worse than Obama has, and McCain would have been rock solid on the war. Be that as it may, McCain has never been my favorite Republican.

McCain’s fundamental problem – and he shares it with many other GOPers – is that he fails to realize that the other side is not motivated by patriotism and a desire to put country ahead of party. Democrat leaders are political animals through and through and view everything through the prism of whether or not it will help them get elected/re-elected. If doing good by the country helps them get elected, then so much better for America…but Democrat leaders will do things absolutely destructive to America if they perceive it as helping advance themselves in power. This has been true as far back as the Wilson Administration in which the war effort in World War One was, as far as possible, impounded to the benefit of Democrats and followed through with Democrats sabotaging investigations into communist infiltration of Democrat-led government, turning defeatist in Vietnam after leading us into that quagmire, undercutting Reagan in his attempts to undo the USSR, treating terrorism as a crime rather than an act of war, deciding that defeating Bush and the GOP trumped defeating those who carried out 9/11…

Republicans must understand that Democrats will only come along if they think it advantages their side – if we can cast a GOP program in such terms that it makes Democrats think it helps them – or harms them greatly to oppose it – then we can get Democrat support…but when push comes to shove, it must be battle day in and day out until such time as Democrat leaders change and become patriots first, Democrats second. McCain is in trouble because he has failed, thus far, to learn this lesson – if he learns it swiftly, he’ll be easily re-nominated and re-elected. If he doesn’t, then at the best he’ll have a bruising primary fight followed by a desperate campaign to save his seat.

The story:

A pro-family leader in Ohio is blasting pro-life Republican senators who voted to approve the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary, despite her long history of support for abortion and her connections to notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller.

Senator George Voinovich (R-Ohio) was among nine Republicans who supported the Sebelius nomination on Tuesday. Phil Burress, president of Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, says he was extremely disappointed but not surprised that Voinovich backed Sebelius.

“He comes from this perspective that the President has the right to pick this person and that the senators are supposed to rubber-stamp them, and I don’t understand why he thinks that way,” he admits. “He’s had that position on many other occasions — and so did Mike DeWine when he was in the Senate, and it cost him his job.”

Burress, a friend and ally of Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), says he was “totally shocked” that Brownback voted for Sebelius. He believes Brownback’s move was driven by his desire to become the next governor of Kansas.

Governor Sebelius is who she is – a liberal Democrat brought in by a liberal Democrat to help advance a liberal, Democratic agenda. No problem – Obama is free to pick whom he wishes and were we in the Senate majority we should only reject a Presidential nominee for moral failure of some sort (and in the Sebelius nomination, a case can be made for that given her deceptions regarding the depth of her pro-abortion support). But since we are the minority and can’t change the result, there is no reason for us to join in and give liberal Democrats our votes. It is time to stand firm – and by registering a negative vote against someone like Sebelius we would be indicating our firmness with that very large and very important part of the GOP coalition: pro-life voters and devout Catholics (Sebelius, after all, has been de-facto excommunicated by the Catholic Church).

Here was a chance for the Senate GOP to let the people know that it is on the people’s side…and nine of them went and blew the chance. What for? Likely just a continuance of that poison known as Senatorial collegiality. Such a sentiment is fine when we’re dealing with political parties which have different ideas about how to achieve the same goals – but when the parties are so starkly divided over what America should be, adhering to the good-old-boy Senate model merely helps the other side and outrages our side.

Its time for the Senate GOP to wake up – in its small minority its job is to ask the questions which expose the liberal agenda, offer up alternatives and in all activities point the way to how the GOP will govern once returned to the majority. The House GOP is very much getting its act together (but still has a long way to go), while the Senate GOP is still acting like its the majority needing too placate a strong, liberal minority in order to keep the meat-grinder of government running smoothly. Times have changed, Senate GOP…time to change with them.

Our Congressional GOP is just not picking up on what is happening:

After losing Arlen Specter to the Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell moved quickly to gauge the level of discontent of one of his caucus’ few remaining moderates.

McConnell sat down privately with Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine on Wednesday and let her vent about what she thinks is going wrong with the Grand Old Party.

It was a one-on-one follow-up to a New York Times essay in which Snowe contended the party didn’t need to lose Specter.

After the meeting, Snowe had nothing but good things to say about McConnell, R-Ky., and focused her criticism on other wings of the party.

“My concern is that it’s hard for the leader and others who work here to try to create a more inclusive message that could well be overshadowed or neutralized by the national party,” Snowe said Thursday. “It’s been a painful lesson, but hopefully we will learn from it and build on it.”

A McConnell spokesman said the leader met often with Specter and cultivates relationships on the floor and in office meetings.

“He tends his garden,” spokesman Don Stewart said.

Maine’s two senators, Snowe and Susan Collins , are among the Republicans most likely to vote with Democrats on policies such as energy, entitlements and social issues such as support for abortion rights.

Snowe, Collins and Specter were pivotal to passage of the economic stimulus (PL 111-5), as the only three Republicans in Congress who voted in favor of the bill.

And that last bit is the important part – it wasn’t that we conservatives didn’t like the way Specter, Collins and Snowe are pro-choice but the fact that they can’t even adhere to the very basic GOP principle of low spending even when its a defining issue like Obama’s spendulus package. This wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill spending issue – this was the moment when we switched from GOP governing ideas to Democrat governing ideas. And that is fine – the Democrats won and thus they get to set the agenda…but there was no need for GOPers to join in; let the Democrats take full responsibility with no “bi-partisan” cover. Specter, Collins and Snowe just wanted to be part of the team – the team of whomever is most powerful in DC…and right now its the tax and spend liberalism set which is most powerful, and Specter, Collins and Snowe didn’t want to be uncool and lose out on a possible White House invite or two.

Let no one try to sell us on the Donk talking point that we lost Specter because we’re pro-life, or in favor of winning the war, or what have you…Specter had been with us for years while we were exactly that; he only left because he knew he was toast in the GOP and for Specter the most important thing is that Specter remain at the public trough and continue to be part of the powerful in DC. Specter just turned yellow, plain and simple – courage would have required Specter to either try to win the GOP primary, or switch to Independent and try to win a three-way contest…Specter took the chicken**** path and joined the Democrats, who really don’t care what you believe as long as you’ll vote as you’re told. Specter will now be a good servant to his new masters.

It is time for Senator Snowe to choose – she is welcome in the party just so long as she adheres to core GOP principle: limited government, low taxes, strong defense, etc. But if she feels that her personal political ambitions trump the needs of the GOP, then she must leave…and the sooner the better so we can lay the ground for a GOPer to run for her seat. Its time for Senator McConnell to start listening to the regular folks – we won’t want Snowe in the party if the cost of keeping her means allowing Democrats to gain allegedly GOP cover for their foolish, socialist plans for America. No rancor – heck, not even mild disappointment. Snowe is who she is and she’s perfectly within her right to believe and act as she wishes…but the GOP is a party of principle, and if you can’t adhere to the basics, then its better to get out.

If this pans out:

NRSC Vice-Chairman Orrin Hatch said today that he doesn’t believe former Congressman Pat Toomey has a chance to beat newly turned Democrat Arlen Specter in next year’s Senate race in Pennsylvania. Hatch even suggested that the NRSC may seek to recruit a candidate to run against Toomey.

“I don’t think there is anybody in the world who believes he can get elected senator there,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, the vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Asked if the NRSC would back Toomey, Hatch said, “I don’t think so” and that the party should look for “someone who can win there.”

The Chairman of the NRSC, Texas Senator John Cornyn, has yet to endorse Toomey and said today that he wasn’t sure that Toomey would be the “only candidate” or the “strongest candidate” either. In fact, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham suggested a name today that has been thrown around in political circles since Specter’s defection – Tom Ridge. The reluctance of the NRSC to get on board Toomey’s campaign, especially in the wake of Specter’s defection, is troubling. What kind of Republican party does the GOP leadership in Washington want to have?

Senator Hatch, no one will believe Toomey is going to win if you cut him off at the knees before he’s even got a chance to get started. This is what I’m on about – the people vs the powerful. I’m sorry to say that Senator Hatch has got an attack of “poweritis”…in what could be some residual “my distinguished colleague” affection for Senator Specter, Hatch appears to be trying to ensure that the GOP pick someone who “can win” and that means “can’t be differentiated from Specter” and that means “Specter wins”. Senator Hatch – just who in heck are you to be deciding for the PA GOP who can win there? Let the PA GOP decide the candidate and then, dammit, get out there and fight like heck for him – that is the job of the NRSC.

To all our GOP Senators: We don’t want you to get along with your Democrat opponents. Did you catch that? They are your opponents. For those a little slow up on the uptake, this means they don’t want our side to win – your Democrat opponents in the Senate are really, really keen on having the Democrats win, and they are not too concerned about just how its done. When one of your dear friends on the other side of the aisle offers you some advice, do the dratted opposite, ok? Trust me – you know, a fellow Republican – on this; any advice offered by a Democrat to a Republican is not advice designed to advance the cause of the Republican party.

All we want for you is to fight for us – for justice, mercy, patriotism, love of our fellow men and women. We don’t want you to fight for increased funding for some bull*** federal program most of us have never heard of and will never avail ourselves of. If you can’t grasp this concept, then just follow Specter into the Democrat party. Its cool, ok? If you don’t want to fight for us, then fight for whomever it is you wish…but don’t ask for our support and then fight against us.

We report, you decide:

First, quoting myself:

I’d rather have 30 Senators I can rely on than 60 Senators who are in it for themselves…

Now, Senator DeMint (R-SC):

I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of beliefs.

Or is it that great minds think alike? Or perhaps that there’s room for one more rock solid conservative Republican in the Senate? For now, I’ll just congratulate Senator DeMint on the sheer brilliance of his remark.

Via NRO’s The Corner:

Sen. Judd Gregg (R, N.H.), formerly President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary and the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, just castigated Obama over his budget proposal in a press conference on Capitol Hill.

“This translates to a debt-to-GDP ratio that we have not seen in this country since the end of World War II, when we were trying to pay off war debt,” he said. “If you take all of the presidents from George Washington to George Bush, and add up all of the debt they put on the books of the American people, President Obama’s plan adds more debt than that.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, standing with Gregg, warned Democrats against passing the budget along party lines and using budget reconciliation to pass sweeping new programs. “If you do it with no bipartisan buy-in at all, then you own the whole thing.”

Its an amazingly stupid thing, this Obama plan – and it seems to be what you get when you have a Chief Executive who is a mere sock puppet while his minions are a dog’s breakfast of hacks, has-beens and wheeler-dealers…you get plans divorced from reality, but chock full of corruption. These fools are playing around with American power and wealth and they haven’t the foggiest notion that their little scams are going to eventually be paid for in American blood and treasure. They just don’t get it.

It could come to this:

Obstetrician and gynecologist Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) has said that pro-life medical practitioners will “go to jail” rather than violate their conscience if the Obama administration reverses federal conscience protection rules.

In an interview with CNSNews.com on Friday in Washington, D.C., Sen. Coburn was asked what he thought would happen if the administration reverses the policy.

“I think a lot of us will go to jail,” he said. “Let’s see them prosecute the first one of us for not doing that.”

And they will, too – and millions of us will also line up to go to jail, if it comes to that. If the Culture of Death people think we’re just pro-lifers for kicks, they have quite another thing coming their way if they try to force pro-life people to advance the Culture of Death. We will not betray our beliefs – we are pro-life at the command of God, and we cannot deny Life without denying God.

Think carefully, liberals, what you are doing here – you are opening up a very bad can of worms; you are, indeed, writing the title page to the book to be called “Civil War II”. Unless you change your mind, and realize that while you might think Life to be trivial, we don’t.

Bringing the absurdly named “Fairness Doctrine” out from under its lefty rock, and exposing it to the light of day:

Although a spokesman for President Barack Obama said the administration wouldn’t pursue the revival of the Fairness Doctrine, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, S.C., wants Senate Democrats to go on the record one way or another on the issue.

DeMint, chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, said on Feb. 19 he will offer the Broadcaster Freedom Act as an amendment to the D.C. Voting Rights bill next week. The Broadcaster Freedom Act was introduced by Republican lawmakers last month and prevents the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

“I’m glad President Obama finally confirmed his opposition to the Fairness Doctrine, which attacks the right of free speech on talk radio, but many Democrats in Congress are still pushing it,” DeMint said. “With the support of the new administration, now is the time for Congress to take a stand against this kind of censorship. I intend to seek a vote on this amendment next week so every senator is on record: Do you support free speech or do you want to silence voices you disagree with?”

Its a fair question – and unless Reid can squash this, it will pass overwhelmingly, because no Democrat up for re-election in 2010 will want to be within a country mile of a vote against free speech.

We must fight and must remain vigilant – the left wants to curtail freedom because it leftwing thought holds that non-leftwing thought is wicked…deliberately wicked, or wicked by being folly, but wicked in any case. And something which is wicked is not to be tolerated – in this case, Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, with a possibility of throwing in the conservative blogosphere, too.

If we want to emerge out of the Obama morass as free people, we will have to keep on our toes to guard our liberties against a leftwing which doesn’t really understand what liberty is.

From Senator Lamar Alexander, via Post Politics:

This bill will give American workers $8 a week in their paychecks in exchange for passing along a $1 trillion debt to our grandchildren. The entire New Deal in today’s dollars cost only half of what this bill costs.

The wife and I are eagerly anticipating what we’ll do with that extra $8 a week, each…me, personally, I figure we go heavy into canned goods, and spend the tax return on the shotguns. Meanwhile, we drain out the 401k and buy gold.

Its going to be a very long four years, and we’re going to emerge out of it a great deal poorer than we are today – but, hopefully, we’ll be wiser in a lot of ways and especially in that way which makes people positively retch at the mere thought of another liberal, Democratic Administration.

At least to some degree:

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the massive stimulus bill backed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could go down to defeat if it’s not stripped of unnecessary spending and focused more on housing issues and tax cut.

The Senate version of the bill, which topped out at nearly $900 billion, is headed to the floor for debate. The House bill totaled about $819 billion and earned no Republican votes, even though it easily passed the Democratic-controlled House. At some point lawmakers will need to compromise on the competing versions.

McConnell and other Republicans suggested that the bill needed an overhaul because it doesn’t pump enough into the private sector through tax cuts and allows Democrats to go on a spending spree unlikely to jolt the economy. The Republican leader also complained that Democrats had not been as bipartisan in writing the bill as Obama had said he wanted.

“I think it may be time … for the president to kind of get a hold of these Democrats in the Senate and the House, who have rather significant majorities, and shake them a little bit and say, ‘Look, let’s do this the right way,’” McConnell said. “I can’t believe that the president isn’t embarrassed about the products that have been produced so far.”

Anything the Congressional GOP can do to cut out the wasteful and worthless spending and add a bit of actual stimulus and/or tax cuts will just make it that more likely we’ll start to get out of this recession some time in the second half of 2010 or, perhaps, the first half of 2011…pass it as is, and we’re doomed to an economic depression which will last until a year or two after Obama and his Democrats are either booted out of office or, at least, are forced to apply supply-side economics to the problem. Of course, my preferred course of action is one which won’t happen, but which would put us on the best long-term course – admit we screwed up for the past 75 years or so and go back to a genuinely free market economic system. But we won’t do that – because we’re stupid (and I mean that in a nice way).

In the end, the election of Obama – the most overtly leftwing President America has ever had – might prove beneficial to conservatism in the long run. By showing how entirely out of touch the left is, Obama and his Democrats are just handing the GOP issue after issue to clobber them on in 2010 and beyond. But first we must try to save the economic life of the United States – even if by helping to kill the worst aspects of the bill we end up helping Obama.

Good man:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told “Fox News Sunday” this morning that he would not support the stimulus package as the House Democrats have written it because it includes too much wasteful spending.

The stimulus currently includes $275 billion in tax cuts and doesn’t include Republican input or a spending timeline, McCain said.

“There should be an end point to all of this spending.say two years…The plan was written by the Democratic majority in the House primarily. So yeah, I think there has to be major rewrites, if we want to stimulate the economy,” McCain said. “I am opposed to most of provisions in the bill. As it stands now. I would not support it.”

McCain wouldn’t say whether he would filibuster it.

“We need serious negotiations,” he said. “We’re losing sight of what the stimulus is all about and that is job creation.”

Of course, I don’t think we “lost sight” of what the stimulus is all about – in the sense that it always was about Democrats rewarding their contributors and buying votes. If any jobs were created along they way, Democrats would be ok with that…as long as they weren’t created in Republican districts, of course.

The GOP must make it clear – as McCain has done – that this Obamanomics boondoggle is all Democrat, all the time. This plan, as presented, will fail miserably and cause our already weak economy to collapse completely – when everything goes smash, we don’t want any GOP fingers on it because Democrats will brazenly blame us for failure if they can put even one GOPers name on it in a leadership position. We want our hands clean and our party able to credibly state that we warned when it was proposed, offered solid alternatives and opposed it when it came up for a vote.

We’ll have to see:

Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of “petty grievances,” President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support.

Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning the new president’s pledge, ignoring his call for bipartisan comity and shutting them out of the process by writing the $850 billion legislation. The first drafts of the plan would result in more spending on favored Democratic agenda items, such as federal funding of the arts, they said, but would do little to stimulate the ailing economy.

The GOP’s shrunken numbers, particularly in the Senate, will make it difficult for Republicans to stop the stimulus bill, but the growing GOP doubts mean that Obama’s first major initiative could be passed on a largely party-line vote — little different from the past 16 years of partisan sniping in the Clinton and Bush eras.

“Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters yesterday, saying Republicans were not being realistic in their expectations.

Hoping to recapture the bipartisan spirit, Obama will host nine congressional leaders at the White House today for talks about the economic recovery package, which he has asked to be on his desk by Feb. 16, Presidents’ Day. He also agreed to talk with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and other GOP lawmakers next week about their proposals for more tax cuts.

Republicans have a long list of grievances.

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), who gave Vice President Biden a 17-page list of spending requests, said he opposes the proposed increase in funding for Pell Grants for college students because it would do little to spur short-term economic growth. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said the plan lacks enough “fast-acting tax relief,” such as a temporary halt to payroll taxes and more relief for businesses. Sen. John Thune (S.D.) said the nearly $1 trillion price tag would add too much to a federal deficit that is already predicted to top $1.2 trillion for 2009.

“The Republican concerns about what’s moving in the House are growing by the day,” Thune said. He dismissed as “very, very ambitious” Obama’s hope of securing a bipartisan majority of 80 votes for the stimulus plan in the Senate, which could consider its version of the legislation next weekend.

Yes, Nancy, you won the election – and we GOPers should not sign off on a plan which looks to be a slow-moving economic disaster. We can’t do much to actually stop the legislation from going forward…but there’s no need for GOPers to provide a patina of bi-partisanship to a bill which is relentlessly partisan as well as horribly flawed.

Before we GOPers sign on to this, we must insist upon at least some free-market, supply side provisions be inserted into the bill…even if its just making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent. That would at least allow businesses to engage in long-term planning and might help turn the economy around by the middle of 2011. All the current bill does is spend bags of money to no actual purpose – and if such a bill is passed, then whent it all comes crashing down, we want “Democrat” written all over it.