When Governor Perry and I sat down last week in Orange County, CA, I wanted to drill down on two areas of interest for conservative voters.

First, in his book Fed Up!, Governor Perry repeatedly returned to the idea of federalism, but few people have really explored that with him. This transitioned into some questions on immigration, his views on amnesty, and what role the states have to pay in immigration laws with Washington doing nothing.

For this week’s primary target, I want to make an exception. I do it because the Congressman deserves it and to make a point. I want to focus on someone who represents a district that is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. For sure, I think its wise to focus on those Republicans who are wasting a good conservative seat, which is why I have covered districts so far that are +10 GOP seats or better. Those are no brainers. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t occasionally draw attention to liberal Republicans in swing districts also — particularly one on the Super Committee who seems hell bent on raising your taxes.

Why? For a couple of reasons. First of all, conservatives can hold these seats when they are principled and willing to explain themselves to their constituents. Republican politicos love to forget that Pat Toomey represented a Democrat district that voted for Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barak Obama. He was a die hard advocate of free trade amidst calls for steel tariffs in the steel mills of Allentown, Pennsylvania. He didn’t just vote and hide. He was typically the leader of House conservatives during his time in the House of Representatives. He would win handily with winning percentages of 57% (2002), 53% (2000), and 55% (1998). And now he is serving in the United States Senate representing the blue state of Pennsylvania.

But the reason that it is so important to fill these seats with conservatives is because they often act like a ring in a bull’s nose, steering the Republican majority as a whole to the left and using their “potential” electoral demise to demand concessions from their conservative colleagues. These concessions are normally done in concert with a sympathetic Leadership who are always willing to take a moderate’s word for what is needed to get elected.

Let’s take just three vignettes that barely show up in the voting record of this Congressman, who was elected in 1986 and is serving his 13th term (its not you, Charlie Dent, so you can relax for now).

Read More →

Were someone in casual conversation to refer to a black person as the n word or even as “colored,” what would the reaction be? And if that person immediately took to twitter to say the “remark this morning was a very poor choice of words. Did not mean to make that connection at all. Was not thinking. I apologize,” what would people think?

Typically when something like that happens, the presumption is that the person must have had his brain on autopilot and released his inner thinking without passing it through the “acceptable discourse” filter or some such. There could be other explanations — maybe he read something or heard something ahead of time and it got lodged in the input/output loop. That happens to everyone.

What exactly explains David Gregory this morning saying there are no “Grand Wizards” in the GOP to push Herman Cain out of the race?

Is he presupposing the existence of Klansmen in politics? Maybe if he means there are none in the GOP, then he is admitting there have been Klansmen in the Democratic Party, see e.g. Robert Byrd.

Either way, running to twitter to apologize for a stunning remark like that suggests David Gregory either really thinks there are a bunch of racists in politics, or David Gregory has been exposed to a bunch of people discussing racists and Herman Cain lately.

And my guess is, frankly, the latter.

Read More →

Promoted from the diaries

Allies are people you work with.  Garden pests and leaky faucets are things you “deal with.”

President Obama doesn’t seem to know the difference.

At the G20 summit last week in France, he let out his true feelings on Israel.  And a live mic was there to catch it all.

Here’s the exchange between President Obama and French President Sarkozy on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

–Sarkozy: “I cannot bear Netanyahu.”

–Obama: “You’re sick of him, but I have to deal with him every day.”

Deal with?

The State of Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East.  It’s a democracy surrounded by radical autocracies and extremists who would like to see it wiped off the map.  Due to our shared strategic interests in the region, our countries depend on each other’s support.  Our alliance and friendship is one to be vigorously defended and actively cultivated—not disinterestedly dealt with.

If the President finds working with Israel so terribly irksome, Republicans will gladly relieve him of that burden.  We’ll send a Republican to the White House who truly values the American-Israeli alliance.

To be sure, President Obama’s attitude toward Israel could hurt him in 2012.  And it’s already damaged his party’s electoral prospects before.  Earlier this year, Democrats lost control of the 9^th District of New York, which includes a large Jewish population.

Democrats won decisively in the last three presidential elections there, but in a special congressional election earlier this year, the district flipped Republican—due in large part to voters’ perception of Obama’s lukewarm attitude toward Israel.  Less than a year earlier, they elected a Democrat 61-39.

Similar scenarios may now play our on a larger scale next November.  In swing states like Florida and Pennsylvania, Jewish voters and other pro-Israel groups dissatisfied with the President’s stance, could turn their states red in 2012.

Americans across the country recognize Israel’s important to our own country’s security.  In a region where terrorists threaten American interests, Iran seeks nuclear weapons, and unfriendly regimes control the world’s energy supplies, we need Israel and Israel needs us.

The stakes are too high.  And failing to recognize that could create much more daunting problems for the president to “deal with.”

I urge President Obama to put this issue behind him by publicly apologizing to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

When your state is known as the “Mother of Presidents”, and home to Yorktown, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Appomattox, and the first permanent English settlement in America, you don’t toss around the saying “we made history” too lightly.

But, my friends, I am pleased to say that is exactly what the Commonwealth of Virginia did Tuesday. We Made History.

With their votes yesterday, Virginians gave Republicans working majorities in both chambers of our state legislature. In the House of Delegates we now have 67 Republican delegates, the most in Virginia history. We won 13 of 14 open seats and defeated two Democratic incumbents. In the Senate we gained two seats, moving the body to 20-20 and placing it in Republican control with GOP Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling holding the tie breaking vote. We won 3 of 5 open seats and defeated two Democratic incumbents. All of this means that this upcoming session will be only the second time since Reconstruction ended, 141 years ago, that the GOP will control Virginia’s Executive Mansion, State Senate and House of Delegates at the same time. The only other time this occurred was during a brief two-year period from 1999-2001. That’s right, since 1870, Republicans have controlled the executive and legislative branches of Virginia government for all of 1.4% of the time.

In politics change can come quickly. In our case, quickly doesn’t begin to do this turn around justice.

Read More →

Download audio here

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by David P. Goldman to discuss demographic changes in the Muslim world, their impact on policies, and how the US can best deal with evolving Islamic societies.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Buy How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too) on Amazon
MacroStrategy.com

Follow Pej on Twitter
Follow Kevin on Twitter

The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.

From the diaries by Erick

So, this morning, were the lead stories on television that Nancy Pelosi, whose belittling and famous “Are you serious? Are you serious?” response to being asked about the challenge to the ObamaCare individual mandate, was the perfect illustration of her radical and out-of-touch mental state — and that she is as out of touch as former President Bush was when he expressed amazement at grocery store price scanners?

Uh, no. (The media’s obsession with the Penn State sex scandal can be explained by the fact they think it will hurt Herman Cain.)

Meanwhile, the voters in the ultimate Presidential election swing state just handed the repeal ObamaCare team a massive victory right before the Supremes take up the case, and if it made the news, it was way down the list.

Read More →

The Washington Post sums it up: at least six seats lost by the Democrats (including their House Minority Leader) in the House of Delegates and either one (Bill Stanley over Roscoe Reynolds) or two (Bryce Reeves leads Edd Houck by 86 votes) in the state Senate.  If it’s one, the Democrats retain control of the state Senate; if it’s two, then the Senate is tied and the Lieutenant Governor breaks all ties.  The Democrats are in that kind of jubilant despair that you get when things aren’t quite as bad as you thought that they were going to be; public relief aside, losing your House Minority Leader* isn’t good news.  Particularly since (as Larry Sabato noted last night) Virginia’s Senate redistricting process was in the hands of the Democrats and they still lost at least one seat.  That’s not good news for Democrats on the national level.

Read More →

On September 17th, when the #OccupyWallSt movement took over Zuccotti Park, one of New York’s finest summed it up when he said, “these are the protesters no one else wants–they’re the worst of worst.“

Since then, however, Democrats, the Obama administration and, especially, unions have all put their support behind the #OccupyMovement depsite (as noted previously) the multiple rapes, the assaults and drug dealing, open sex, public masturbation,  anti-American rants, and violence From almost the very beginning, unions were eager to jump on board with the Neo-Communist squatters, their anti-Semites and their useful idiots in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park the unions have paid for protesters, water, food, legal fees, and advertising.

With Democrats now saying the #OWS message will be the message of  their 2012 campaign, the first question should be: Do Democrats, the Obama administration and unions really, really want to hitch their wagons to this carnival-like freak show? Especially with stories like this one becoming an almost everyday occurrence [via CBS Los Angeles]:

Read More →

Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

RedState Morning Briefing
For November 9, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

Read More →

Issue 2 in Ohio has failed. Unions poured a gazillion dollars into Ohio and won.  Despite having a sense of this outcome for some time it still stings.  Believe it or not, a great many felt that these reforms were important steps in bring fiscal and structural sanity to government.  The voters clearly did not get that message.

The media is going to try and play this as horse race politics. Governor John Kasich lost and the Democrats won.  And obviously, in some important sense – even if only in the fact the story and perspective being conventional wisdom – this is true. Kasich and Republicans passed this legislation and it has been rejected.  Fair enough.

But I personally believe there is a simpler explanation.  Voters like their local cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers.  In many ways, they idealize these type of positions even if they don’t like the state of education or public safety, etc.  Thus opponents of reform had a very easy and emotionally effective message: Senate Bill 5 is an attack on the “everyday heroes” who protect our communities.  It doesn’t really matter if this was true or not.  In a 30 second ad it is easy to say and makes an emotional connection. This is a huge advantage in a statewide ballot issue.

Combine this with the huge financial advantage the opponents had (unions could take dues from union members regardless of their political beliefs and spend it on this election) and you have an uphill battle for supporters (and of course there is a minority of voters – public sector and labor unions – who are simply voting their self-interest).  All they had to do was blanket the state with pictures of police and firefighters opposed to the issue and the lasting impression is that the bill is an attack on the people we value the most in our communities.

Read More →