Campaign 2016 Open Thread

I am curious as to everyones thoughts on the early stages of the 2016 field which filled out a little more over the last couple of days with the announcements of Hillary and Marco Rubio. The contrast between the roll outs of Hillary’s and Marco’s campaign could not have been more stark. Hillary is stale with the charisma and the charm of a ferret while Marco came off as fresh and invigorated with a vision for the 21st century. I have always liked Marco but need to see him command the stage a little better with a firm grasp of the issues. I think he will grow into that role. I also like Walker and Cruz and it will be fun to watch them develop their campaigns over the next year.

I think the Democrats are in real trouble. The only viable candidate they have is Hillary who does not exactly warm the hearts of many Americans. Aside from Hillary, there is a possibility that O’Malley and Webb might run but I don’t see that happening – I think both of them are probably angling for the VP slot. And then of course you have two full blown communists in Sanders and Warren which shows you just how far left, and how small the Democratic Party has become.

The youth, energy, and the diversity are found in the GOP field. The future belongs to common sense, personally responsible conservatives – and that is a good thing for this country.

 

 

Scandal-Plagued Harry Reid is Retiring!

Many of us have been waiting a long time for this to happen… Today it was announced that Senator Harry Reid will not seek reelection!

Senator Harry Reid, the tough tactician who has led Senate Democrats since 2005, will not seek re-election next year, bringing an end to a three-decade congressional career that culminated with his push of President Obama’s ambitious agenda against fierce Republican resistance.

Mr. Reid, 75, who suffered serious eye and facial injuries in a Jan. 1 exercise accident at his Las Vegas home, said he had been contemplating retiring from the Senate for months. He said his decision was not attributable either to the accident or to his demotion to minority leader after Democrats lost the majority in November’s midterm elections.

What the New York Times article fails to mention is that Harry Reid has been implicated in a number of scandals recently, including a bribery scandal out of Utah, a “green energy” subsidy scandal, and the EB-5 Visa scandal. Of course, Harry Reid has a long history of corruption, which you can read about in our short ebook, The Audacity of Harry Reid.

Reid’s departure from the Senate also makes his seat a potential Republican pickup.

Attacking Big Corporation as a GOP Campaign Issue

See? It’s not just me any more – Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) weighs in on how the GOP can leverage a bit of anti-corporatism for electoral victory:

…the fact is that many big businesses are unpopular with the public, aligned with the Democrats, and wide open for attack. And after eight years of the Obama administration’s naked cronyism and support of Wall Street even as the middle class has suffered, the opportunities are there.

One of the most appealing targets would be the tech industry’s wage-suppressing hiring habits. Not only have tech giants like Apple and Google engaged in what a federal court called an “overarching conspiracy” to prevent wage competition, but Silicon Valley firms also abuse H-1B visas to bring in immigrant competition at lower wages, a practice that’s now spreading to other industries. (In Los Angeles, Southern California Edison is firing workers and replacing them with immigrants now)…

Reynolds goes on to note how big corporations – especially big tech – are abusing the H1-B visa program to get rid of well-paid American workers and bring in low-paid foreigners, thus abusing both Americans and foreigners in the name of increased corporate profits. That is just one in a very long line of issues where Big Corporation is working against the United States. We on the GOP side have got to wrap our minds around the fact that big anything is bad. Once a concentration of power and wealth exceeds a certain size, it becomes baleful…and must be controlled carefully, lest is wreck everything. We understand this regarding things like the Department of Education, but we’ve failed to understand that General Motors is just like the Department of Education…an bureaucratic behemoth most interested in using raw, political power to preserve itself.

It is the free market we must defend – not those who are on top of the market and who are abusing their position. That the leaders of these corporations also largely support Democrats (or are at least de-facto liberals), just makes attacking them doubly advantageous for us. It becomes best of all when we realize that a lot of people who vote liberal (but who are not particularly liberal, themselves) can be moved to vote for us when we do this. Defending the worker against ruthless exploitation by Big Tech is just a splendid way to move the needle in our favor…let Democrats defend the H1-B visa program, we’ll defend the workers.

We have a grand opportunity to take the abysmal failure of the Obama years and use it to destroy liberalism as a political force forever. All we have to do is dare to take it.

America’s Ruling Class Unites on Amnesty

The House voted today to approve the filthy and disgusting DHS funding bill – it is called “clean” by the Ruling Class because it cleanly drops a hammer on the American people. Seventy five Republicans joined almost all the Democrats in the House to approve the monstrosity; 167 Republicans voted against – and that, my friends is roughly the actual number of people on our side there are in the House. In terms of actual political power, we are the distinct minority in DC. Get used to it and get ready to fight to change it.

Here we are, March 3rd, 2015, and the leadership of the Republican Party has decided that it wants to ratify Obama’s illegal and odious amnesty policy. Fine. Glad to know it. Lets us all know where we stand – and where they stand. The leadership of the GOP is entirely beholden to the Ruling Class of this nation and will do its bidding, come what may. They are expecting rank-and-file GOPers to stay with them – after all, what are we going to do? Vote Democrat? Well, why the heck not? What do we get by voting for Republicans?

Ace is in a fine and entirely justified fury – now advocating for a $15 an hour minimum wage…because if we’re going to have a two-party Ruling Class screwing over the American people, let’s at least get a bit of pay back. The GOP leadership signed off on this because the GOP part of the Ruling Class wants to import millions of unskilled workers…so that they can employ them at low wages, thus increasing their profit margins…and screw the American worker. Yeah, well, I see Ace’s point – jack that wage up to $15 and hour and see how the Chamber of Commerce likes it.

Still, it isn’t quite time for us to put Hillary in the White House – there’s hard ball politics and then there’s suicide…but we really should seek ways to punish the Congressional GOP for their transgressions. Primary the heck out of every GOPer who voted for this dog of a bill…and if they survive the primary, then vote for their Democrat opponent in the general. Get them out; let them know that we don’t elect Republicans in order to do the bidding of liberals and the Chamber of Commerce…we elect them to represent us and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. I’d rather have us back in Congressional minority status come 2017 than continue with leadership that doesn’t do one darned thing for our side.

Massive GOP Win; So, Now What?

First and foremost, boys and girls: be realistic.

No, there won’t be an impeachment of Obama (and, anyways, even if we could, do you really think we’d want to relieve the Democrats of the Obama albatross at this point?).

No, there won’t be a repeal of ObamaCare: Obama would veto any such proposal (or anything which defunds or otherwise guts the legislation) and we would not have the votes to over-ride.

Just forget about things like that. Obama is still President and still wields awesome authority and influence – that is a problem for another day: we GOPers also let the President get too powerful and that power has to be reduced…but we can’t get there right now. All we can do for the present is remember that Obama is a committed leftist, doesn’t give a rat’s patoot about what the American people think, is more than willing to break the law to get his way and believes that it is his bound duty to destroy anything non-left. We have to work with this, or around this – we can’t get rid of it or destroy it right now. And the MSM will still form a praetorian guard around him, with the only caveat being that they’ll jump on a grenade for Hillary in preference to Obama; they gotta think about the future and Obama is old news.

But there is still plenty the GOP can do. Always keeping in mind that the real purpose is to set the stage for a complete GOP victory in 2016, of course. We’re not necessarily going for enacted reforms – if we get some, great: but the real purpose is to set a reform agenda comprehensible to the American people as a platform for defeating the Democrats in 2016. The best means to do this is to pick about 10 issues which are very popular with the American people and over time pass them out of Congress and send them to Obama. Passing popular reform legislation will give GOPers things to brag about in 2016 and will show our party as being the party of “getting things done”. It will also put Obama in quite a pickle – reforms such as approving the Keystone Pipeline or allowing people to recover their cancelled health care plans will be popular, but Obama will be in a bad position on them. He’ll either have to veto them and anger the American people, or sign them and tick off the liberal base he needs to ensure his agenda is protected in 2016 (and Obama does want a Democrat to win in 2016 – he knows a GOP President in 2016 will undo all or most of what he’s accomplished). To us, it doesn’t matter what he does – if he signs it, then we’ve got good stuff to talk about; if he vetoes it, then we get to campaign on getting a Republican into the White House to move forward with reform.

To be sure, Obama will try to short-circuit such actions. His Presser on Wednesday is enough to confirm that. He will try to do things to outrage Republicans and, in his hopes, provoke a heavy counter attack which he hopes can be used to cast him as the long-suffering reformer stymied by an obstructionist Congress. Hillary wants this, too – she’d like nothing better than to campaign on the concept that she can get Congress to work. We dare not let Obama do this. In fact, its much better at this point that we ignore what Obama wants to do. Let him propose away – just go ahead and pass what we believe is best and let it land on his desk. Once the reforms are there, he’ll have to do something. For the first time in his life he’ll have to take concrete action that he can’t blame on anyone else. He’ll hate it. It will be wonderful

We did very well in 2014. The 2016 electorate will be different – it will be more Democrat friendly, no matter how bad things are going for Obama and the Democrats by then. But it will not be insurmountably Democrat. A program of clear, easy to understand reforms which will directly benefit the American people will show us as the party of the people – and allow our 2016 nominee to campaign on a reform platform against eight years of Obama failure, and the prospect of an Obama Third Term if the Democrats win. This is not the sure path to victory, but it is the path to victory. Let’s go ahead and take it.

The Art of Redundancy

If it is one thing the Democrats are very good at, and one thing that their legions of progressive sycophants depend on – it’s redundancy. The Democrats bleat on endlessly over contrived issues and the repetition thereof results in an allegiance amongst their base that rivals that of the most famous Tyrants. It’s at a level now that I have never seen before and the most recent Paul Krugman article is a great example. You may remember Paul Krugman – the Nobel prize winning progressive economist who decries the inequities of a capitalist society and whom recently accepted a six figure position with an institution of higher progressive learning for offering his valued opinion on matters of import, yet not required to lower himself to the masses and actually teaching in the classroom. This latest Krugman article perpetuates the infrastructure redundancy that progressives seemingly fall back on every time they need an economic issue to distract voters with. You may remember the Obama proclamation of 2008 wherein the great orator decreed:

“We will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways, and we’ll set a simple rule – use it or lose it. If a state doesn’t act quickly to invest in roads and bridges in their communities, they’ll lose the money.”

Subsequently, in March of 2009, the single greatest stimulus package was passed and funds were given to the administration to use where they sought fit. Strangely, the infrastructure still seems to be a problem, and an issue of which progressive elites like Krugman feel that they can foam up the base with one more time:

“In prosperous times, public spending on roads, bridges and so on competes with the private sector for resources. Since 2008, however, our economy has been awash in unemployed workers (especially construction workers) and capital with no place to go (which is why government borrowing costs are at historic lows). Putting those idle resources to work building useful stuff should have been a no-brainer.”

Now, did Krugman forget his Messiah’s 2008 proclamation and subsequent spending spree, or is he being purposely deceitful? I will leave that to your own imagination, but you can all easily imagine is what Krugman’s answer is to this on-going infrastructure problem – more taxes of course:

“It’s hard to think of any good reason why taxes on gasoline should be so low, and it’s easy to think of reasons, ranging from climate concerns to reducing dependence on the Middle East, why gas should cost more. So there’s a very strong case for raising the gas tax “

The progressive Democrats have yet to find a problem, real or contrived, that can’t be resolved by raising taxes. The problem for them is that these issuess are never resolved despite how many taxes they raise, and fortunately for those of us in “realville”, the majority of voters are starting to come to that realization. One thing is for certain though, you can expect this issue, , and the other redundant issues of climate change, and the patently absurd “war on women” to be part and parcel to the Democrats 2014 and 2016 agenda.

Pragmatism and Principles

I saw Dr. Ben Carson interviewed last night regarding his new book “One Nation”, which is a book I plan to read on vacation, and with this effort, he could gain traction as a serious candidate for POTUS. His credentials speak for themselves, and his positions on politics are common sense and practical. His recent column at Townhall is an excellent read, and his sentiments are spot on:

If conservatives are going to win in 2014 and 2016 and preserve the environment of freedom to which we have grown accustomed, it will be necessary to learn how to prioritize issues. I am not saying that social issues are not important, but if the executive branch remains in the hands of those with “secular progressive” ideas in 2016, and two or three more Supreme Court justices with similar leanings are appointed, conservative social ideas will become anathema to the prevailing powers, who will use every tool available to them to silence such opposition.

The extreme intolerance of the left for opinions that vary from their own has been amply demonstrated on university campuses, in the mainstream media and in the public square in recent years. Boycotting those with whom they disagree is insufficient for them, as demonstrated by their attempts to put their political adversaries out of business or assassinate their character.

His 2012 address to the National Prayer breakfast regarding Healthcare was an excellent example of how a conservative should outline conservative principles on national issues in a rational, intelligent and positive light. The best part of that speech was that Obama was front and center, and in fact the Dr. mentioned in the interview that a member of Obama’s administration called him after that speech and said that he owed Obama an apology. An apology of which was never delivered. Keep an eye on Dr. Carson.