"Harriet"

Daniel John Sobieski writes in the American Thinker,

...It is Democrats who owned the slaves, founded the KKK, and wrote the Jim Crow laws. It is Democrats who stood in the schoolhouse door and still do, opposing school choice. It is Democrats who turned on the fire hoses and unleashed the dogs. It was Democrats who blocked the bridge in Selma. A higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats The improvement of black lives under Trump and a free market economy is no mirage but a portent of things to come that has the Democratic Party running scared.

Harriet Tubman supported the Republican Party because it opposed slavery. She carried a gun because it protected the liberty and freedom of herself and those she delivered to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Just as Democrats sought to enslave and disarm blacks back then, they now seek to entrap them in high-crime urban areas run by liberal Democrats who seek to deny them, and the rest of us, the right to keep and bear arms.

Read more here.

"The epitaph to “hope and change”—the greatest gift to the Republican Party in a century"

Before the disaster at the United Nations, Victor Davis Hanson wrote this on December 14:

He rammed budgets and Obamacare through without a single Republican vote. When Obama lost the House and his supermajority in the Senate, Harry Reid simply adopted the nuclear option and ended most filibusters (to the regret now of Democrats).

When he lost the Senate as well, Obama turned to “pen and phone” executive orders and simply ignored Constitutional give and take and bypassed the Congress (amnesties, non-immigration enforcement, EPA fiats, picking and choosing which part of Obamacare he enforced, etc.)—again to the chagrin of Democrats who now fear that Trump might do what Obama did with executive orders.

We forget the alphabet scandals of the last eight years: Lois Lerner and IRS, the NSA mess, the GSA boondoggles, the horrific record at the VA, the crazy EPA director and her fake email persona and the EPA’s unconstitutional fiats, the Wikileaks/Hillary emails/Clinton Foundation pay for play at the State Department, the abrupt departure of Hilda Solis at Labor, the strange career and departure of Petraeus at the CIA, the Sibelius firing at HHS after the surreal startup of Obamacare, and on and on and on.

Obama entered with record good will, both houses of Congress, an upswing in the states, and a likely chance to alter the Supreme Court; he leaves with the strongest Republican position in 100 years, from governorships and state legislatures to the Congress and presidency. The Supreme Court could soon tilt 6-3 or 7-2.

Such was the epitaph to “hope and change”—the greatest gift to the Republican Party in a century.

Read more here.

Drifting toward the falls

Patrick Buchanan writes in Taki Magazine,

On Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2016, the national debt is projected to reach $19.3 trillion.

With spending on the four biggest budget items—Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense—rising, and GDP growing at 1 percent, future deficits will exceed this year’s projected $600 billion.

National bankruptcy, then, is among the existential threats to the republic, the prospect that we will find ourselves in the not-too-distant future in the same boat with Greece, Puerto Rico and Illinois.

Yet, we drift toward the falls, with the issue not debated.

...And, in America, is diversity leading to greater unity, or to greater rancor, separatism and disintegration? Did anyone imagine that, 50 years after the civil rights laws, we would still be having long hot summers in Ferguson, Baltimore and Milwaukee?

...In 2013, the top 1 percent of Americans in income paid 38 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent of income-earners, half the nation, paid only 3 percent of all income taxes.

A question logically follows: If one belongs to that third of the nation that pays no income taxes but receives copious benefits, why would you vote for a party that will cut taxes you don’t pay, but take away benefits you do receive?

Traditional Republican platforms ask half the country to vote against its economic interests. As a long-term political strategy, that is not too promising.

During the New Deal, FDR’s aide Harold Ickes, declared in what became party dogma, “We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

And so they did, and so they do. But this is a game that cannot go on forever.

Read more here.

Rigged!

Grim writes at Grim's Hall,

Is a "Trainwreck" Ever Good?
To answer Ed Morrisey's question, there is one really positive aspect to the trainwreck in Cleveland. It proves, again, that the Republican party is not rigged.

The Democratic Party really is. We've seen the fix in for Clinton from the DNC's own internal messaging, from the way in which they structured the debates to favor Clinton's interests, and especially from the handling of her criminal troubles by the Justice Department. The whole system, up to and including the criminal justice system, was rigged to deliver her as nominee. When a substantial number of Democratic voters said, "No, thank you, we'd really prefer Bernie," the DNC bent itself backwards to make sure that he failed. The voter fraud was so bad that even Snopes can't bring themselves to fully deny it.
WHAT'S TRUE: Two researchers (presumably graduate students) from Stanford University and Tilburg University co-authored a paper asserting they uncovered information suggesting widespread primary election fraud favoring Hillary Clinton had occurred across multiple states.

WHAT'S FALSE: The paper was not a "Stanford Study," and its authors acknowledged their claims and research methodology had not been subject to any form of peer review or academic scrutiny.
That's funny stuff -- 'OK, the part about the study proving widespread voter fraud is true, but it's not really a 'Stanford Study,' it was just done by students at Stanford... and, er, nobody's going to check their work, because nobody wants to know if they're right.'

So, democracy is messy. The RNC had a rules fight, a floor fight, Ted Cruz's excellent speech on principle, and then nominated Donald Trump. Donald Trump, I mean, and not Jeb Bush. If the Republican party were rigged like the Democratic party, Jeb Bush would be the Republican nominee this morning.

Factor that in to the choice, I suppose. The Democratic system is rigged from stem to stern. The Republicans are really taking this democracy thing seriously, even at the cost of losing control of the party, even at the cost of public embarrassment. Even, possibly, at the cost of what should have been an easily-winnable election.

Maybe that commitment to democracy ought to mean something. I leave it for you to decide.

Women, Jews, and Gays: key Democrat constituents, and all are targets of Islamists!

Yet, they keep voting for the people who allow this cancer (aimed at them) to continue to grow! Do the Democrats want freedom for homosexuals, or dependency? In Obama's America, gay lives rank below Muslim feelings.
View the latest Right Angle with Bill Whittle, Stephen Green and Scott Ott here.

Struggling to take the moral high ground

Tom Krannawitter writes,

Pre New Deal Democratic politics offered two alternatives: Vote Democrat to oppress black people, or be labeled ignorant.

Post New Deal Democratic politics offers two alternatives: Vote Democrat to steal from those who are most productive and give to others what they've not earned, or be labeled a hater.

And ever since the Civil War, Republicans have struggled to take the moral high ground from Democrats.

No, seriously, they have. Hard to imagine losing moral high ground to the Democratic Party, I know. But Republicans figure out how to do that decade after decade. It's kind of amazing.

The question is: Does that say more about Democrats, Republicans, or the American people?

You decide.

Republicans are not conservative?

Dennis Prager writes at National Review,

There are many reasons Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The four most often cited reasons are the frustrations of white working-class Americans, a widespread revulsion against political correctness, disenchantment with the Republican “establishment,” and the unprecedented and unrivaled amount of time the media afforded Trump.

They are all valid.

But the biggest reason is this: The majority of Republicans are not conservative.

...Why haven’t Americans over the past three generations known what America stands for?

Probably the biggest reason is the influence of left-wing ideas.

America stands for small government, a free economy (and therefore capitalism), liberty (and it therefore allows for liberty’s inevitable consequence, inequality), the “melting pot” ideal, and a God-centered population rooted in Judeo-Christian values (so that a moral society is created by citizens exercising self-control rather than relying on the state to impose controls).

Only America was founded on the idea of small government. But the Left is based on big government.

America was founded on the principle that human rights come from the Creator. For the Left, rights come from the state.

...The American Revolution, unlike the French Revolution, placed liberty above equality. For the Left, equality is more important than all else. That’s why so many American and European leftists have celebrated left-wing regimes, no matter how much they squelched individual liberty, from Stalin to Mao to Che and Castro to Hugo Chávez. They all preached equality.

It took generations, but the Left has succeeded (primarily through the schools, but also through the media) in substituting its values for America’s. While the Left has been the primary cause, there have been others. The most significant is success.

So, then, thanks to leftism and America’s taken-for-granted success, most Americans no longer understand what it means to be an American. Those who do are called “conservatives” because they wish to conserve the unique American idea. But conservatives now constitute not only a minority of Americans, but a minority of Republicans. That is the primary reason Donald Trump — a nationalist but not a conservative — is the presumptive Republican nominee. As I noted from the outset, I will vote for him if he wins the nomination — because there is no choice. But the biggest reason he won is also the scariest.

Read more here.

Could both of our political parties lose their rationale for existence?

Jonah Goldberg writes in USA Today,

...“During Obama's eight years in office, the Democrats have lost more House, Senate, state legislative and governors seats than under any other president,” writes NPR’s Mara Liasson. She adds, "Democrats currently hold fewer elected offices nationwide than at any time since the 1920s."

There are many reasons for this, but one is particularly relevant. Obama lost the traditional heart of the Democratic Party: the white working class. In fairness, the Democrats’ trouble with blue-collar whites pre-dates Obama, but Obama accelerated the process. In 2012, he lost this group by 26 points (62%-36%). Trump is winning with those votes.

... Moderate and centrist Democrats have been effectively purged from the party. Hillary Clinton might look like a somewhat conservative Democrat to some, but that’s mostly because she has been hounded for months by an avowed democratic socialist.

If the GOP actually did implode tomorrow, it would spell both a short-term bonanza for the Democrats and a long-term existential crisis. People forget that beyond policy and philosophy, what sustains both parties is a kind of team sport. The Democrats run on being anti-GOP, and the Republicans campaign on being anti-Democrat. Take away one dance partner, and the one left on the floor has no idea what to do next.

And dancing with Donald Trump won't be anything like dancing with Ted Cruz, who has suspended his campaign. The Democrats have no idea how to tango with a new GOP that also promises to maintain or expand entitlement programs, raise trade barriers and tax the wealthy. If the Republican Party under Trump joins Democrats in wanting to fund Planned Parenthood, how will we tell who is leading and who is following?

Whether Trump destroys or merely transforms the GOP, the net effect could be the same: Both parties could lose their reliable rationale for existence. That kind of creative destruction could leave a vacuum for one or more new parties to fill the void.

Helpful tips for those of you who are new to the political process

Are you new to politics? This election cycle is bringing on lots of people who have never participated in the political process before. Many of these people are supporting either Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. Tom Krannawitter has some helpful suggestions for you:

Want to be a Republican? It's easy. Pretend your Party has some vague respect for the Constitution. Pretend your Party represents limited government and stands for individual freedom, personal property, and the rule of laws that offer equal protection for all citizens. Ignore the many pathetic crony clowns who get elected with an R behind their names.

Want to be a Democrat? It's easy. Make no effort to learn the ugly history of your Party. Or any history for that matter. Or law. Or economics. Heck, you don't even need to learn math. Focus your energy on making fun of Republican crony clowns. And level accusations against everyone who has worked harder and produced more than you -- while demanding those same people you accuse give to you what you've not earned.

Who is looking out for us?

Mark Steyn writes,

On Wednesday's show Rush Limbaugh discussed the Trump phenomenon through the lens of a 20-year-old Sam Francis article:

"Imagine giving this advice to a Republican presidential candidate: What if you stopped calling yourself a conservative and instead just promised to make America great again?" What do you think might happen in the current climate, where the middle class in the country feels totally left out of everything going on?

They feel like they've been targeted by every liberal Democrat policy that has not been stopped by the Republican Party. What if you dropped [talking] about the free market," stop all of that, "and promised to fight the elites who were selling out American jobs? What if you just stopped talking about reforming Medicare and Social Security and instead said that the elites were failing to deliver better health care at a reasonable price? What if, instead of vainly talking about restoring the place of religion in society ... you simply promised to restore the Middle American core," and everything it stands for?

Rush's view is that "nationalism and populism have overtaken conservatism in terms of appeal" - ie, that there are insufficient takers for conservatism. It comes to something when the nation's Number One conservative talk-show host is putting it that way, but you can see what he's getting at.

In contrast to the ebb and flow of eternally shifting multiparty systems, America has a rigid, inflexible two-party choice:

One party is supposed to be the party of big government, the other the party of small government. When the Big Government Party is in power, the government gets bigger, and, when the Small Government Party is in power, the government gets bigger.

One party is supposed to be the party of social liberalism, the other the party of social conservatism. When the Socially Liberal Party is in power, the country gets more liberal, and, when the Socially Conservative Party is in power, the country gets more liberal.

One party is supposed to be the party of foreign-policy doves, the other the party of foreign-policy hawks. When the doves are in power, America loses wars, and, when the hawks are in power, America loses wars.

So much for American conservatism's three-legged stool. "Mainstream" Republican candidates are essentially reduced to the argument: This time it'll be different, I promise.

Democrats' principal appeal isn't to philosophical coherence: They tell their coalition that they'll take care of their own - the gays, the blacks, the feminists, the transitioning, the environmentalists, the Hispanics, the educators... This time round, a big chunk of the Republican base has figured it'd like someone who's looking out for them, too.

If the present polls hold up through Iowa and New Hampshire, it'd be the reconfiguration of Mr and Mrs Main Street America as just another interest group. So a philosophical commitment to free trade means less to them than the degeneration of mill and factory towns into wastelands of fast-food service jobs and heroin addiction. An abstract respect for religious pluralism means less to them than reducing the number of crazies running around whose last words before opening fire are "Allahu akbar!" A theoretical belief in private-sector health care means less to them than not getting stiffed by crappy five-figure health "insurance" that can be yanked out from under you at any moment under Byzantine rules and regulations that change 30 times a day. And bipartisan myth-making about "a nation of immigrants" means a whole lot less than another decade of Press One For English, flatlined wages, sanctuary cities and remorseless cultural transformation...

Why liberals feel first and think later

From Chateau Heartiste: The stereotype of liberals as emotionally underdeveloped children who feel first and think later now has support from the very entity liberals have raised to divine status: SCIENCE!

Liberals and conservatives exhibit different cognitive styles and converging lines of evidence suggest that biology influences differences in their political attitudes and beliefs. In particular, a recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure, with liberals showing increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, and conservatives showing increased gray matter volume in the amygdala. Here, we explore differences in brain function in liberals and conservatives by matching publicly-available voter records to 82 subjects who performed a risk-taking task during functional imaging. Although the risk-taking behavior of Democrats (liberals) and Republicans (conservatives) did not differ, their brain activity did. Democrats showed significantly greater activity in the left insula, while Republicans showed significantly greater activity in the right amygdala. In fact, a two parameter model of partisanship based on amygdala and insula activations yields a better fitting model of partisanship than a well-established model based on parental socialization of party identification long thought to be one of the core findings of political science. These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk, and they support recent evidence that conservatives show greater sensitivity to threatening stimuli. […]

These ideological differences between political partisans have been attributed to logical, psychological, and social constraints and past scholarship has focused primarily on institutional political processes or individual policy preferences, rather than biological differences in evaluative processes. But recent work has revealed physiological correlates of the differential responses to risk and conflict by liberals and conservatives. Consistent with the previously identified attitudinal divergence, conservatives have more intense physical reactions to threatening stimuli than liberals. Conversely, liberals had stronger physiological responses to situations of cognitive conflict than conservatives.

The insula and amygdala often function together in processing situations of risk and uncertainty [30]. The amygdala plays a critical role in orienting of attention to external cues [31] and fear conditioning [32]; however, this structure is also important for other emotional information processing and behavior [33]. Functional neuroimaging studies have shown amygdala activation in reward related processing [34], encoding of emotionally salient information [35], risk-taking [36], processing positively-valenced stimuli [37], and appetitive/aversive olfactory learning [38]. In comparison, neuroimaging studies of insular cortex have observed critical involvement of this neural structure in pain [39], interoceptive [40], emotion-related [41], cognitive [42], and social processing [43]. In particular, the insular cortex is important for representation of internal bodily cues crucial for subjective feeling states and interoceptive awareness[40], [44]. That differences in the processing of risk and uncertainty differentiate liberals and conservatives suggests an alternative way of conceptualizing ideology.Related study results: Testosterone level influences amygdala functioning.

The activity of the emotion centres in the brain – the amygdalae – is influenced by motivation rather than by the emotions themselves. This can be concluded from research carried out into the hormone testosterone. Testosterone increases amygdala activity in a person who is approaching a socially threatening situation and decreases the activity when such a situation is avoided. It was already known that the amygdala response to images of angry faces was stronger in a person who had received testosterone. This new study shows that this only happens when people approach angry faces and not when they avoid them.

Related study results: Testosterone level influences amygdala functioning.

The activity of the emotion centres in the brain – the amygdalae – is influenced by motivation rather than by the emotions themselves. This can be concluded from research carried out into the hormone testosterone. Testosterone increases amygdala activity in a person who is approaching a socially threatening situation and decreases the activity when such a situation is avoided. It was already known that the amygdala response to images of angry faces was stronger in a person who had received testosterone. This new study shows that this only happens when people approach angry faces and not when they avoid them.

Can Republicans win minority votes and still stand on principles?

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page Magazine,

Republicans court the minority vote by making two major mistakes.

The first mistake is assuming that a minority group is a single collective whose members all think the same. Yes, they may vote the same way, but that’s the outcome of a process combining everything from community organizing to media control which created a Democratic political identity for that group.

The second mistake is then aiming outreach at the organizations that form that political identity. That is like Coke trying to get Pepsi executives to drink Coke. It sounds stupid, but Republican outreach that involves the NAACP or Univision appearances are just as stupid. Those are arms of the Democratic Party. The only thing that outreach to them accomplishes is to reinforce their communal power while letting them set the narrative. The outreach ends with Republicans being told about the importance of embracing Democratic policies. And some Republicans are even stupid enough to fall for it.

Republicans are not going to win a majority of their votes any time soon, but they can win a minority of theirs votes without compromising their principles.

And they can do it while weakening the Democratic political identity within that group.

Democrats consistently lose the white vote, but combine high percentages of the minority vote with a minority of the white vote. The Republican model should focus on increasing its share of the white vote, increasing white voter turnout and adding enough minority votes to weaken the Democratic coalition.

Instead of imitating the Democratic Party’s broad spectrum targeting of minorities, Republicans should look at subgroups where they do better than the average within that group. For example, among Asian voters, Republicans perform better with Japanese and Vietnamese Americans than with Chinese or Indian voters. Among Jews, Republicans do better with religious Jews rather than secular Jews.

Bloomberg split the Latino vote in 2001. When he faced a Latino candidate in the New York City mayoral election four years later, he didn’t panic. His opponent was Puerto Rican and so his campaign aimed at the city’s growing Mexican population who felt overlooked and he won a third of Latino voters.

Instead of writing off an entire group as one collective whole, he drilled down to a subgroup.

... 60 percent of Jews who attend weekly religious services disapprove of Obama. 58 percent of Jews who rarely attend approve of him.

...Likewise, instead of pandering to #BlackLivesMatters, Republicans should address black voters worried about crime and gang violence. They’re not going to get the #BlackLivesMatter vote anyway, but they might make some inroads among black voters looking to clean up their neighborhoods.

... Instead of liberalizing their positions to appeal to minority voters, Republicans should target conservative issues within segments of minority groups concerned about those issues.

Instead of competing to be better Democrats, they should distinguish themselves as Republicans.

...The “inoffensive Republican” candidate is a failed legacy of another era that should not have survived the Reagan years.

Being inoffensive does not win elections. Engaging the base by focusing on the compelling issues that they care about does.

Republicans should not back amnesty. That’s stupid and suicidal. Neither should they completely write off the Hispanic vote. They should not endorse pro-crime policies, but neither should they completely write off the black vote. Those are false choices manufactured by the left to push the GOP against a wall.

...The first time, Giuliani won by increasing white voter turnout. The second time, he turned out a larger number of minority voters who were willing to support him while maintaining his existing white support.

...The Republicans can’t compete on pro-crime policies, amnesty or the welfare state with the left anyway. When they try, they lose their own base. But there are plenty of Asian voters angry about affirmative action, black voters angry about crack dealers in their neighborhoods and middle class Hispanic small business owners who are angry about the welfare state. Instead of chasing minority voters that the GOP can’t get, it should connect on traditional conservative issues with those it can get.

Read more here.

Aiding and abetting

Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review about Obama and Kerry's Iran deal:

...in the grand deal our president describes as subjecting the mullahs to historically rigorous inspection, disclosure, and verification requirements, there is no inspection, no disclosure, and no verification.

And did I mention no sanctions?

...The president had it backwards Wednesday when, in his repulsively demagogic speech on the Iran deal, he said that Republicans are aligned with the Iranian “hardliners chanting ‘Death to America.’” It is Obama who is aiding and abetting the hardliners. Republicans have merely aided and abetted Obama.

Read more here.

Politics

P.J. O'Rourke explains at The Weekly Standard,

Politics is a way to gain power over people without justification for having that power.

...Politicians gain power by means of empty promises or threats, or both when they’re on their game. Should you vote for people who are good at politics? No. You should vote for Republicans. We’re lousy.

Believe me, I know why you don’t vote for Republicans. You see the Republican candidates and they look so .  .  . Bush-League, Dog Walker, Rubio Rube, Get-Outta-the-Carson, Hucka-Upchuck, Ap-Paul-ling, Cruz Control, Fat-Fried Christie Crispy, Son-of-a-Kasich, Dingleberry Perry, Flee the Fiorina, Sancta-Santorum, Graham Cracker, and Nervous 7/11 Night Shift Manager Jindal.

And never mind the busted flush Trump Card who should be spray-painted with Rust-Oleum primer, have a squirt gun super-glued to his hand, and kicked through the front door of the Ferguson, Mo., police station.

Republican politicians stink. This is because real Republicans don’t go into politics. We have a life. We have families, jobs, responsibilities, and it takes all our time and energy to avoid them and go play golf. We leave politics to our halt, our lame, and our feeble-minded. Republican candidacies are sinecures for members of the GOP who are otherwise useless and/or retired.

Democrats, on the other hand, are brilliant politicians. And I mean that as a vicious slur. Think how we use the word “politics.” Are “office politics” ever a good thing? When somebody “plays politics” to get a promotion, does he or she deserve it? When we call a coworker “a real politician,” is that a compliment?

Democrats pay a lot of attention to you. They offer you all sorts of trick-or-treat giveaways.

Benefits are the way government is expanded. The more government expansion, the more opportunities for politicians to get power. (Beware of razor blades in the candy apples.)

Democrats offer you regulations to make your life safer from razor blades in candy apples. Regulations expand government with unelected regulatory bodies so that politicians can get power without bothering about your vote.

...Democrats adore your demographic groups. Democrats are pro-woman, pro-black, pro-Latino, pro-immigrant, pro-LGBT, pro-AFL/CIO, pro-differently abled, pro-unemployed, pro-poor. (And by pro I mean whore.)

Besides prostituting themselves to your demographic groups, Democrats are adhering to the first principle of political elites: Divide and conquer.

...The Democratic party is one big family. This means—as those of us from big families know—all of you detest each other. Or you will by the time Democratic matriarchs and patriarchs get done parceling out too little to one group, too much to another, and none to most.

Democrats are particularly infatuated with the demographic group of voters who are poor. Democrats provide many social programs for the poor. If you happen to be poor, you know what these social programs do. They pay you to stay poor.

Democrats favor a higher minimum wage. And they’ll make sure you get a minimum wage. Forever.

Democrats want to give you health care that’s free—and worth it.

Democrats will provide you with more opportunities to get an education and buy a house. A couple hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt and a huge mortgage that’s underwater will keep you poor for sure.

And then Democrats tax the hell out of your beer and cigarettes—two of the few small pleasures available to the poor.

Democrats are tough on business. After all, you might get into business. And make money. And
vote Republican.

And even if we don’t care about you—because of our inability to care or your inability to be cared for—at least we’ll leave you alone.

Democrats will herd you into a group. Democrats like groups because they loathe individuals. Any given group can be made dependent on political power. Any given individual is a different matter.

Democrats are in favor of abortion and against the death penalty. How could anyone possibly arrive at that pair of moral judgments? Republicans can, sometimes, understand the majesty of death—abortion as a matter of private conscience and evil paying the ultimate price. Republicans can, sometimes, understand the sacredness of life—each fetus as a being and how we must not take what we cannot give from any person, however bad. But no Republican understands the virtue of killing a baby too innocent to be born while sheltering and feeding a murderer until he gets fed up and tunnels out of Dannemora.

Democrats hate you. And your family. Sixty-nine percent of America’s abortions are performed on women who are poor. More than half of the people in prison report pre-arrest annual incomes of less than $10,000.

A fetus is an individual who might grow up to be anything, even a Republican. Meanwhile convicts are a group that is fully dependent on government. (And in Vermont, felons in prison can vote by absentee ballot, which may explain Bernie Sanders.) “Wait!” you say. “Republicans are just as bad! Look at the Republican candidates trying to attract votes from segregationists, male chauvinists, gun nuts, religious lunatics, transgender-bashers, Nazis, climate-change-deniers, union-busters, flagrant emitters of greenhouse gases, and Wall Street malefactors of great wealth.”

Yep. There our candidates are, trolling through the gutters of the electorate. That’s what politics does to people. It sullies even the most well-bred fellow and gal. Especially if they happen to be halt, lame, feeble-minded, or otherwise useless and/or retired and have therefore taken up politics.

Stay away from politics. And vote Republican. As it says in Forrest Gump (the book’s author, Winston Groom, is a Republican), “Stupid is as stupid does.” And you can count on us Republicans to not do much.

Read more here.

So the demagogue rises. The party splits. And the Clintons win.

Matthew Continetti writes in the Free Beacon,

It is immigration—its universally celebrated benefits and its barely acknowledged costs—that is the third rail of U.S. politics, with repercussions from the border to Eric Cantor’s district in 2014 to courtrooms and the Republican debate stage today. Trump didn’t step on the third rail; he embraced it, he won’t let go of it, and in so doing he’s become electric. Republicans, Democrats, journalists, corporations all want to define themselves against him, and their flaunting of their moral superiority only feeds the media monster, only makes Trump more attractive to the dispossessed, alienated, radical middle.

...What Republicans are trying to figure out is not so much how to handle Trump as how to handle his supporters. Ignore or confront? Mock or treat seriously? Insult or persuade? The men and women in the uppermost ranks of the party, who have stood by Trump in the past as he gave them his endorsements and cash, are inclined to condescend to a large portion of the Republican base, to treat base voters’ concerns as unserious, nativist, racist, sexist, anachronistic, or nuts, to apologize for the “crazies” who fail to understand why America can build small cities in Iraq and Afghanistan but not a wall along the southern border, who do not have the education or skills or means to cope when factories move south or abroad, who stare incomprehensibly at the television screen when the media fail to see a “motive” for the Chattanooga shooting, who voted for Perot in ’92 and Buchanan in ’96 and Sarah Palin in ’08 and joined the Tea Party to fight death panels in ’09.

These voters don’t give a whit about corporate tax reform or TPP or the capital gains rate or the fate of Uber, they make a distinction between deserved benefits like Social Security and Medicare and undeserved ones like welfare and food stamps, their patriotism is real and nationalistic and skeptical of foreign entanglement, they wept on 9/11, they want America to be strong, dominant, confident, the America of their youth, their young adulthood, the America of 40 or 30 or even 20 years ago. They do not speak in the cadences or dialect of New York or Washington, their thoughts can be garbled, easily dismissed, or impugned, they are not members of a designated victim group and thus lack moral standing in the eyes of the media, but still they deserve as much attention and sympathy as any of our fellow citizens, still they vote.

What the radical middle has seen in recent years has not given them reason to be confident in our government, our political system, our legion of politicians clambering up the professional ladder office to office. Two inconclusive wars, a financial crisis, recession, and weak recovery, government failure from Katrina to the TSA to the launch of Obamacare to the federal background check system, an unelected and unaccountable managerial bureaucracy that targets grassroots organizations and makes law through diktat, race riots and Ebola and judicial overreach. And through it all, as constant as the northern star, a myopic drive on the part of leaders in both parties to enact a “comprehensive immigration reform” that would incentivize illegal immigration and increase legal immigration despite public opposition.

The Republican Party has had two historic midterm victories, only to see its gains at the ballot box overruled by presidential veto or decree, by infighting, by incompetence. When the salient GOP accomplishment of 2015 will be granting President Obama Trade Promotion Authority, when the leading Republican candidates for president are telling donors they will push for comprehensive immigration reform when in office, when those candidates seem more interested in following the lead of the press than caucus goers, when they so often fail to respond directly and forcefully to provocations domestic and foreign, when it is sometimes hard to determine what they believe in beyond their own ambition, how is it surprising that a not insignificant portion of the grassroots, along with some people who normally do not pay attention to politics, are supportive of or intrigued by the outspoken and entertaining Donald Trump?

That Trump is not a conservative, nor by any means a mainstream Republican, is not a minus but a plus to the radical middle. These voters are culturally right but economically left; they depend on the New Deal and parts of the Great Society, are estranged from the fiscal and monetary agendas of The Economist and Wall Street Journal. What they lack in free market bona fides they make up for in their romantic fantasy of the patriotic tycoon or general, the fixer, the Can Do Man who will cut the baloney and Get Things Done. On social questions their views tend toward the moderate side—Perot was no social conservative, either. What unites them is opposition to elites in government, finance, culture, journalism; their search for a vehicle—whether it’s a political party or an outspoken publicity maven—that will displace the managers and technocrats and restore the America of old.

Our political commentary is confused because it conceives of the Republican Party as a top-down entity. It’s not. There are two Republican parties, an elite party of the corporate upper crust and meritocratic winners that sits atop a mass party of whites without college degrees whose worldviews and experiences and ambitions could not be more different from their social and economic betters. The former party enjoys the votes of the latter one, but those votes are not guaranteed. What so worries the GOP about Donald Trump is that he, like Ross Perot, has the resources and ego to rend the two parties apart. If history repeats itself, it will be because the Republican elite was so preoccupied with its own economic and ideological commitments that it failed to pay attention the needs and desires of millions of its voters. So the demagogue rises. The party splits. And the Clintons win.

Read more here.

Update: Elizabeth Price Foley at Instapundit adds,

My own preference isn’t to describe this middle as “radical” (because I don’t think they are) but “patriotic.” They abhor the cronyism of Washington elites, and reflect a major “values gap” between DC and Main Street, USA. The irony, of course, is that Trump does not share their values, really–except perhaps on immigration and a few other patriotism-centric issues upon which he’s wisely capitalizing. But at least Trump is finally giving a voice to the Silent Majority’s deeply felt patriotism. The great middle is craving a leader who is unafraid to be unabashedly patriotic.

The question is: Why aren’t more GOP presidential hopefuls getting a clue and matching Trump’s vigor on these issues? Are they simply too weak, and are waiting for Trump to stop stealing “their” spotlight? Or are they too weak on these issues to really care?

No such thing as Santa Claus

Ed Driscoll is posting at Instapundit today. He reminds us of the immortal words of P.J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores:

“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat:”

God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.

Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Read more here.

What professions/occupations are mostly filled by Democrats? Which by Republicans?

What professions/occupations are most likely peopled by Democrats? Republicans? Mark at Verdant Labs posts this chart:

Who are more likely to vote Republican, white Catholics or white protestants?

Which group of voters do you think are more solidly in the Republican camp, white Catholics, or white protestants?. Patricia Miller writes at Salon,

According to the most recent polling from the Pew Research Center, 53 percent of white Catholics now favor the GOP, versus 39 percent who favor the Democrats—the largest point spread in the history of the Pew poll. And for the first time, white Catholics are more Republican than the voting group usually considered the ultimate Republicans: white Protestants (a designation that includes both mainline and evangelical Protestants).

Read more here.
Thanks to Betsy Newmark

Mr. Obama

Reagan was opposed by a prominent family who seeks to occupy the White House for the third time! The only dynasty I like is the Duck Dynasty!

The Republican Party has no principles, no strategy, and no guts! It's time for a new Republican Party.



Mr. Obama,
1. “You have violated the Separation of Powers.”

2.”You have seized unto yourself Legislative Power granted unto the Congress alone.”

3. “You have unilaterally appropriated monies to fund your radical agenda.”

4. “You have contravened Congress’ authority over Immigration and Naturalization.”

5. “You repeatedly defy the Senate’s confirmation power over your appointments.”

6. “You have poisoned the independence of the Judiciary by appointing scores of radical activists to lifetime judicial appointments.”

7. “You have repeatedly evaded the Senate’s role in the adoption of treaties.”

8. “You’ve shown nothing but contempt for the Bill of Rights.”

9. “You’ve shown nothing but contempt for private property rights and free market Capitalism.”

10. “You have nationalized to destroy the greatest Healthcare System on the face of the Earth.”

11. “You have recklessly destroyed the fiscal well-being of this nation with wild spending schemes, driving up the Federal operating debt to $18.5 Trillion and unfunded liabilities to over $100 Trillion.”

12. “You have directed Federal Departments, like the EPA, to unleash thousands of regulations. . . “

13. “You have driven the median-income of Americans down. . . “

14. “You have used the Office of the President to balkanize the American People along lines of race, gender, age and income. . . “

15. “You have showed contempt for our military. . . “

16. “You have failed to take necessary steps to confront Islamic Naziism. . .”

17. “You have undermined our friend Israel to the detriment of our security.”
Thanks to Freedom's Lighthouse

Choice versus Control

Andy Peth is quite persuasive:

Remember, it’s not enough to undo something; we have to convince the country the thing should be undone. So frame each step, carefully exposing Obama’s love of Control while touting our love of Choice. Give the nation time to absorb our message.

Why help the Democrats? Why rush? Revel in the buffet! Go piece by delectable piece, slowly removing each thing people hate. Every couple weeks, force Democrats into another suicidal vote, as Obama vetoes his way to a villainous legacy. Each time, unveil something controlling about Obamacare, and something of ours that expands choice.

Does this mean I’m nice? On the contrary, I’m mean. I’m the meanest Conservative around, for I want Democrats to feel every ounce of the pain they’ve inflicted on America. No short cuts. No racing ahead of the American People. Oh no, I want 2015 to be one long, grueling Enhanced Interrogation of the Left. Let’s put them under the bright light of Choice versus Control, then watch them perspire. After all they’ve done these past six years, they deserve no less.

Read more here.

Thanks to Kris Cook