Via Real Clear Politics – Governor Palin has started a PAC. Its still in its infancy, but it is, as RCP points out, an indicator that Governor Palin has further national political ambitions.

Anyways, I’ve signed up…can’t get too early a start on replacing the catastrophe which will be known as the Obama Administration.

Mark Hemmingway over at NRO has a rundown of the potential race between newly appointed Senator Gillibrand and possible GOP challenger, Rep. Peter King.

As noted in the article, a race between Any GOPer and Caroline Kennedy would be a race GOPers would pay to be allowed to run in – nothing more fun than taking on the clueless scion of a worthless, ultra-liberal political family long shorn of its glamor. But a race against Gillibrand, who has a conservative reputation, has a different dyanmic – if Gillibrand’s conservatism is more than just the result of not being as kook lefty as most New York Democrats.

The American Conservative Union gives King a moderately conservative 76 lifetime rating – which means as a Senator he will routinely annoy the GOP base outside of New York, but that he fits well with the politics of New York State. The ACU, on the other hand, gives Gillibrand a lifetime rating of 8. No, I didn’t forget a number – 8, as in e-i-g-h-t.

Now, there’s not much to go on so far – Gillibrand has only one House term under her belt, so she’s a stealth candidate with allegedly conservative credentials clearly picked with an eye towards the likely mid-term dynamic of 2010 which will have at least an anti-Democrat tinge to it (and a possible anti-Democrat wave) which would make most NY Democrats sure losers in a race against a moderately conservative GOPer.

I figure with Caroline we would have had a 90% chance of taking the seat – but with Gillibrand as the Democrat empty suit, I rate our chances at 60/40 against. But still well worth the effort.

But Obama’s Clintonism which is dragging Obama down, step by step, into a political morass he won’t be able to get out of – from NRO’s The Corner:

The Obama presidency is only one week old, but it has already limned its main moral outlines:

On January 20, President Obama called for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. He also declared his intention to give multiple rights and privileges to homosexual couples.

On January 22, he issued an order announcing his intention to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within one year, but admits he has not figured out how to do that. President Bush had expressed a similar wish, but could find no nations willing to take responsibility for the detainees.

On January 23, President Obama issued an order that authorizes tax dollars for abortions abroad.

From these announcements we learn that President Obama recognizes no difference between the Jewish-Christian covenant between a woman and a man (a covenant that they will have and nurture children, if they are so blessed), and a civil contract between two persons of any sex, in order to set up a household of affection and sexual favors.

This is a relapse into paganism…

…second, that this president’s guiding light in matters of national security is not a realistic assessment of the national interest but personal concern for what kind of figure he is cutting in the international eye. Good headlines first, practical thinking later.

Thirdly, we learn that the president is willing to do what a substantial bloc of U.S. taxpayers abhor, and will resist in conscience. Moreover, it is a mistake to think that people in most other nations love, honor, and respect the secularist preoccupation with abortion.

The first week did not have to begin this way. These first steps were unworthy of a great nation and unworthy of a serious leader. These decisions humiliated those who voted for President Obama because they had been assured, and assured others, that the new president would take seriously the culture of life. It is now clear that the new president was willing to allow those who risked their moral reputations to support him to feel in retrospect like liars…

In his first week in office, Bill Clinton deeply wounded the moral force of his own presidency by turning abruptly against those who regard abortion as the greatest evil of our time, as slavery was in Lincoln’s time. It is sad to see a Democratic president make that same mistake again.

The Democrats, from Obama on down, have learned nothing and forgotten nothing – bitterly stewing over President Bush, the Democrats have yet to figure out that the reason the GOP won in 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2004 was because of a very negative reaction to the moral depravity of liberalism as expressed by such things as radical homosexual rights, radical abortion rights and an unwillingness to be strong against men bent on evil in the world. The Democrats should keep in mind that the GOP did quite well against the Democrats in good economic times in 1994 and 2000 – and if we add bad economic times to these sorts of Obama policies, then 2010 could end up being a very long year for Democrats.

I doubt they’ll figure it out – they have convinced themselves that they didn’t lose over their liberalism but because we GOPers tricked the American people into voting against their own interests. Furthermore, they are now convinced that a majority is wise to these tricks of ours and thus won’t be fooled again. It could be a very rude awakening for our Democrats.

Naturally, I’ll be working very hard to make it as rude as possible.

Then you’d better have faith. Tomorrow is the Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas, the author of the Summa Theologica – given this happy coincidence of St. Thomas and our new President Hope-N-Change, I think it worthwhile to see what one of the great minds of human history had to say on the subject of hope:

…just as it is not lawful to hope for any good save happiness, as one’s last end, but only as something referred to final happiness, so too, it is unlawful to hope in any man, or any creature, as though it were the first cause of movement towards happiness. It is, however, lawful to hope in a man or a creature as being the secondary and instrumental agent through whom one is helped to obtain any goods that are ordained to happiness. It is in this way that we turn to the saints, and that we ask men also for certain things; and for this reason some are blamed in that they cannot be trusted to give help…

…Absolutely speaking, faith precedes hope. For the object of hope is a future good, arduous but possible to obtain. In order, therefore, that we may hope, it is necessary for the object of hope to be proposed to us as possible. Now the object of hope is, in one way, eternal happiness, and in another way, the Divine assistance… and both of these are proposed to us by faith, whereby we come to know that we are able to obtain eternal life, and that for this purpose the Divine assistance is ready for us, according to Hebrews 11:6: “He that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and is a rewarder to them that seek Him.” Therefore it is evident that faith precedes hope.

Unless you have faith – and that, dear friends, would be faith in God – then you can’t have hope. I mean, think about: what are you hoping for if not for eternal happiness? A higher standard of living? Better health care? What for? What good does wealth and health do for you if there is no hope beyond this world?

If we really are to hope for a better tomorrow, then we’d better get believing in God, today. It is belief in God – and only belief in God – which can motivate us to work hard and sacrifice ourselves in order that those who come after may have a better life. If we have not faith and what we’re hoping for is that our own lot will be made easier, then we’re just spinning our wheels quite uselessly.

Now that President Obama has semi-freed himself from Wright’s un-Christian hate-mongering, I hope (because I have faith in God and his ability to move hearts) that Obama will take some time to carefully consider the “hope” part of his hope and change mantra. What it really means, and what it really requires of us. As for me, I’m ready for some stern testing – to pay the piper, as it were, for our national irresponsibility of the past 70 years or so. I hope for a better future, but not necessarily for myself but for, in a real sense, the young people just rising and those who are soon to be born. I want them to grow up in a world freed not just from the fears we have, but from the overbearing temptations to self destruction with which we have avidly supplied ourselves.

Time will tell if hope means something to Obama – and his supporters – or whether it was just a nifty, poll-tested word for a political campaign.

And if only Obama knew what change actually entails – excellent video presentation.

Via Newsbusters – this is hilarious:

Several days before taking office, President Obama traveled to George Will’s home to dine with a handful of conservative media elites. The beltway conventional wisdom suggested that Obama’s aim was to “neutralize potential adversaries” by way of a “charm offensive.” After the dinner, Bill Kristol explained on Fox and Friends that while “no one’s mind was changed,” he would “end up supporting [Obama] on some things.” Charles Krauthammer joked about Obama’s apparent goals, “I am brainwashed entirely. I’m in the tank.”

Just one week later, Obama’s right-wing acquaintances have already shown the futility of engaging in a good-faith dialogue with them. While Obama pushes his vision for the economic recovery package — his first real battle against the conservative establishment — the dinner’s attendees are on a no-holds-barred offensive against it:

Charles Krauthammer: “Look, this is one of the worst bills in galactic history. … FDR left behind the Hoover dam and Eisenhower left behind the interstate highway system. We will leave behind, after spending $1 trillion, a dog run in East Potomac Park.” [Fox News, 1/24/09]

David Brooks: “It is an unholy marriage that manages to combine the worst of each approach — rushed short-term planning with expensive long-term fiscal impact.” [New York Times, 1/23/09]

Bill Kristol: “The stimulus has so much bad stuff in it. … They let the House Democrats get out of control in sort of writing a pork-laden bill. Politically, I think the Republicans have more room too argue for changes and ultimately vote against it.” [Fox News Sunday, 1/25/09]

So, because these conservatives failed to ditch a lifetime of conservative economic philosophy, talking with them was a waste of time, according to liberals. We’re supposed to be so awed by Obama that once he talks to us, we’re supposed to switch over to being Obamaniacs, I guess?

Well, no. Look, if I were to meet President Obama I would call him “President Obama” or “Sir”. He would be treated with the respect due to any person holding the office of the President of the United States of America. I would listen carefully to what he had to say, I would not interrupt while he was talking and I would, if asked, give careful consideration to whatever views he urged upon me. But I wouldn’t cease to be conservative because Obama had dinner with me. As he reached out to me, I would give that extra benefit of the doubt, but when Obama did something in clear contravention of my core beliefs – such as apparently being ok with a “stimulus” bill larded up with pork like never before – then I would declare my opposition.

Only a “tolerant” liberal could get upset over this – upset not just over Obama meeting with people from the other side (for which act I do give him great credit for – he didn’t have to do it, and by so doing it he showed a proper respect towards those who disagree with him), but also upset that the other side is still, after all, the other side.

Mark Steyn over at NRO’s The Corner had bad things to say about TARP and then got this response from a fellow conservative on the matter:

I’m totally with you except in your comments about TARP. This is a real misconception pervading the conservative punditocracy. To suggest that the first $350 billion was “completely wasted” ignores the realities of the situation. At the time TARP was enacted in October, the financial system was on the verge of outright collapse. We’re now in a severe recession, but to have done nothing at that time would have meant reenactment of the worst of the Great Depression. By injecting capital into the system, the TARP money relieved the worst of the risks confronting the system, unfreezing the credit markets. Yes, we can argue about whether this has resulted in propping up some ultimately unsustainable institutions. But the fact is, given the conditions at the time, there really was no choice.

I’m a conservative libertarian, inclined to be extremely skeptical of such large-scale government intervention. In this case, it’s important to recognize that a series of government errors were intimately involved in creating the conditions that led to the crisis – loose money, politically correct and misguided regulatory directives, and irresponsible lending behavior by government-affiliated institutions. So while such intervention is highly distasteful, the extent to which it is being compelled to deal with earlier government mistakes makes it somewhat more acceptable.

I’m a conservative conservative, and it seems to me that in TARP we ended up throwing good money after bad. In the first rush of collapse, I gave my tacit approval to the bail out – now that we’ve seen it fail, I’m opposed to any further such actions. If a company is failing, let it fail – when the dust settles, we’ll be better off for it. And do keep in mind that I work at a large financial institution whose repeated assertions to us employees of continuing financial stability are looked at with increasing doubt…in other words, I’m not at all sure that I’ll have a job next week because there’s a chance my employer might fail. And if it is to fail, let it fail…I don’t want my fellow Americans on the hook for clearing up the mess made by a senior management I view as increasingly incompetent.

The problem here has been the perfect storm of corrupt politics, corrupt economics and funny money. We can’t do anything, at the moment, about the funny money – fiat money is here for at least a while. We can do lots about the corrupt politics and the corrupt economics – corrupt, even if no laws were broken, in the sense that the former betrayed the public trust, the latter betrayed their fiduciary trust. To keep the same corrupt politicians in charge of monitoring the situation while we send taxpayer dollars to the same corrupt businessmen who run the failed firms is the definition of idiocy.

Now, naturally, Obama and his Democrats will bail out the corrupt businessmen and cover up for the corrupt politicians – this as certain as the sun rising in the east. The reason for this is that the corrupt businessmen provide large donations to Democrat campaigns (or, if they haven’t in the past, they will now – if they know whats good for them, know what I mean?) while the corrupt politicians, prosecuted, would risk the worst possible – for Democrats – outcome: a loss of Democrat power. So, we’re just going to go from exceptionally bad to miserably worse in the realm of bail outs – but we GOPers should have nothing more to do with it. Let Obama and his Democrats continue along this path without us so that when it crashes (and its not a matter of if but of when), we’ll bear no further responsibility for it.

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.

Sherman Frederick at the Las Vegas Review-Journal hopes that adulthood comes to some on the left, even if it comes late:

In case you missed it, when President George W. Bush was announced to the crowd, some booed loudly, shocking even the commentators on the official Obama network, MSNBC. One section of onlookers sang, “Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye.” And, finally, as Bush left the White House, one deep thinker took the opportunity to give the “one-finger salute,” thus saying more about himself than anything else.

This from a movement that fancies itself all about peace, love and global karma.

Now look, it would be a mistake to paint all Democrats and Obama supporters with the actions of these few on Inauguration Day. And, according to news reports, some in the crowd tried hard to shush the boo-birds. That is a hopeful sign.

But let’s also not ignore the obvious. There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.

Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be “jailed.” Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church’s way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression.

There is also an ugly racial component to it. We first saw it with Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said, among other things, that white America had deliberately inflicted black Africa with AIDS.

When the Rev. Wright first hit the national stage, we hardly knew what to make of his irrational and separatist statements. Consequently, we pretty much ignored the substance of Wright’s racially divisive rhetoric and focused on it as a day-to-day political story. It made us more comfortable, I think.

But in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate — no matter the color of the person who makes them — and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.

As our president said, it is time to grow up.

The word “tolerance” to the left means “agree with the left”, but real tolerance means “you may do your business without let or hindrance from me”. One doesn’t have to like President Bush and his supporters, but in a pluralist, democratically governed republic, one does have to tolerate them…and part of tolerance is not doing hateful things to them, such as booing their presence at a solemn moment, or demanding they be arrested for imagined crimes. We here on the right were soundly beaten at the polls last November, and that should be satisfaction enough for liberals – but its not, as we see in so many comments and actions by liberals since the election.

The ugliness of the left stems, I believe, from the fact that their worldview isn’t true – defending a false front, they are forced ultimately to rely upon intimidation and the politics of personal destruction to maintain their position. What this means is that as things go forward towards ultimate disaster for liberalism, our liberals will become more rather than less nasty – only those who admit their error completely will be able to free themselves from an all-consuming hatred and bitterness.

If you think that in 2008 we saw the most nasty, hate-filled and dishonest campaign possible from the liberals, then you just haven’t seen 2012, yet.

Kristol offers some cautions and some hope:

Republicans, newly liberated, need to resist calls to shackle themselves to prematurely announced agendas and already anointed leaders. This is the time for a thousand Republicans to bloom. Congressmen used to looking to the White House for guidance or approval–or fearing disapprobation–should show some healthy ambition and unleash their inner policy entrepreneur. Backbenchers need to come forward with heterodox ideas. There should be vigorous debate. Disharmonious disarray is in the short term much less of a danger than a false and stultifying unity.

Everyone looks back nostalgically to 1993-94, the last time Republicans were out of power, but that example is a bit misleading. In 1992, Clinton had won only 43 percent of the vote, and the Republicans had gained congressional seats. The successful Reagan years remained fresh in voters’ minds. The task was simply to reclaim and revivify the Reagan agenda. The task today is both harder and less well defined.

The situation is more like 1977. For one thing, given the unlikelihood of Republicans taking back Congress in 2010, it requires a four-year horizon rather than a two-year one. More important, it requires serious rethinking in fundamental areas. Consider how far the party moved from 1977 to 1980. It was a period of vigorous, even hectic, political, policy, and institutional entrepreneurship, among conservatives both old and new. Thanks to the controversial efforts of backbenchers like Jack Kemp and Bill Steiger, the party rejected green eyeshade budget-balancing and embraced pro-growth supply-side economic policies. Thanks to the emergence of the neoconservatives, Kissingerian détente gave way to Reaganite freedom-fighting. Religious conservatives moved en masse to join the ranks of the GOP. All of this in four years.

The revival of the GOP has to come from the ground up and from outside Washington – from the ground up because we need fresh blood, new faces and bold, new ideas of reform; from outside Washington because the healthy contempt most Americans feel for the people who run government is simply going to get stronger and broader-based as Obama and his Democrats set America rolling on the slow-motion train wreck which will be the Obama Administration. We don’t want to be identified at all with what is going on in DC, except in as much as we can be involved in opposing the clearly bad bits of Obamanomics and offering those bold, new proposals as a counterweight to the Democrat plans.

It is time that we started looking our selves in the mirror and realizing that there’s no Reagan out there to come rescue us. Indeed, if we pay close attention we’ll realize that Reagan wasn’t able to do half what he wanted because the GOP simply sat around waiting for Reagan to do it. No one man can ever do it all (and Obama should pay attention to this truth…but I don’t think he even suspects it exists) – each must play his part, large or small, to advance the cause. If we want to have a conservative government in the United States which will undo the social, political and economic damage liberalism has inflicted over the past decades, then we’re going to have to make it happen – person by person, precinct by precinct, State by State until we get it done.

Nothing can be left off the table and no area of the country can be conceded to the Democrats – while it is certain that prayer in public schools and banning abortion won’t play well in, say, Los Angeles there is the fact that there are plenty of people in Los Angeles who want strong defense, low taxes, secure borders, less burdensome regulation, etc, etc, etc. We can put candidates up all over the country, and we should – because conservative ideals are for everywhere; because liberalism is bad everywhere and must be opposed; because if we even get the liberals to spend 10% of their effort holding their own, that works to our overall advantage.

While adhering to the core values of conservatism (limited government, low taxes, free markets, individual liberty, etc), we must be willing to mix it up and play take away from liberalism. We have to change the terms of the debate – we have to cease having the debate being over whether or not we’re rat bastards and change that debate into a question of who can best govern the United States in the interests of the average American?