Tag: State of Conservatism

A tourist’s view of CPAC (from an insider)

As most conservatives (and a few who aren’t) know, this weekend marks the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC for short) in Washington, D.C. For those of us who can’t be there, blogger Robert Stacy McCain (The Other McCain) gives us a brief flavor of the hubbub:

I’ll grant that my political convention experience is limited to those involving the Young Republicans or Republican Party, and only on a state level at that. Something like CPAC could quite well overwhelm the senses, sort of like a local TEA Party rally (even one with chicken-suited protesters) was in no way a match for the 9/12 rally I attended a couple years ago. Definitely a difference in scale there.

It’s also a reminder that political necessity has allowed a cottage industry of sorts to spring up. With well over 100 sponsors, co-sponsors, and exhibitors there’s no shortage of marketing being perpetrated at the confab.

But on the other hand it’s obvious CPAC would be quite the place for networking, and certainly many of those bloggers who are more well-known than I thus far are represented there on ‘blogger’s row’. (Who knows, maybe I can work my way into CPAC ’13 with a little tip jar rattling, or better yet more advertising revenue. And you can help by spreading the word!) McCain’s video reminds us that there are a large number of like-minded people working on our behalf, too. It’s a comfort to know this.

Maryland GOP: home for interesting electoral action?

At the risk of playing a little too much inside baseball again, it’s interesting to note that the Republican primaries for various Maryland Congressional seats (all but the First District) and U.S. Senate post aren’t the only games in town this April, at least not for those who serve on the various county Central Committees.

The race for the Republican National Committeewoman seat which opened up when Joyce Terhes opted not to seek another term has already made news around these parts, but there was no counterpart on the National Committeeman side, where Louis Pope is presumably seeking another term. Until today.

Continue reading “Maryland GOP: home for interesting electoral action?”

Revolution stalled

For the second Republican presidential campaign in a row, Ron Paul is an enigma.

Here’s a guy who rakes in a whole lot of cash, only to finish in the middle of the pack or worse in most of the primaries and caucuses he participates in. The last time out, he turned his back on the GOP nominee, choosing to endorse a number of minor party participants. There’s no guarantee he won’t do the same this time, leaving establishment Republicans to fret that Paul may consider a third-party run.

Should Paul eventually decide to do so, he’ll have a significant and passionate base to begin from for a general election, where independents and disaffected Democrats would be allowed to participate. A large percentage of those who follow him say it’s either Paul or nothing – “There’s no one worth voting for,” said one young South Carolina supporter. Paul’s cult of personality is not unlike that of another 2008 candidate who’s running again this time around – for re-election.

Continue reading “Revolution stalled”

Who will fund the resistance? (updated)

As I mentioned last night, I added a few new websites to my sidebar links. One interesting add was a site called Zilla of the Resistance, which I had originally run across via a link from The Other McCain. But what sparked my interest again was a link to her from another Maryland-based site called The Vail Spot, which I also link to. Both Vail and Zilla have something in common which I’m sure they aren’t proud of, but has been an issue: the writers have had recent financial hardships, for various reasons, and both were assisted by the generosity of their reader base.

I’m certainly not going to be the first to bring up this point, but who knows? Maybe I can be the last.

Continue reading “Who will fund the resistance? (updated)”

Obama’s path(s) to 270

It’s interesting to hear the strategy Barack Obama and his campaign are trying to put into place to fool Americans once again. But according to his campaign manager Jim Messina, there are at least forty paths he has to winning yet another term. In this video he picks out the top five.

Of course it’s nauseating to think Obama could win and ruin our country for another four years, but it’s possible if we don’t work hard to defeat him in all 50 states.

But there are also good opportunities to snatch away some of the states Kerry won – and Obama is counting on holding. Good examples would be Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Michigan, in that order. If Obama lost in all three, he would be down to 206 electoral votes and would have to win five or six additional states in order to compete. (You can play with the numbers and scenarios yourself here.) If Obama loses those battleground states, though, it’s not likely he’s going to have any chance in states where victory is less assured.

The key, though, is getting the truth out about Obama’s record. Frankly, it sucks – and if America were truly paying attention Obama would be lucky to get 30 percent. (Unless, of course, the idea was to get more Americans reliant on government, in which case the policies are working like a charm to the detriment of our prosperity and our very republic.) But there are a lot of sheeple out there who still blame Republicans – you know, the party which barely controls 1/2 of 1/3 of the government – for everything that goes wrong. If that theory was true, things should have been hunky-dory before the 2010 election and Democrats should have expanded their majorities. Didn’t happen that way, did it?

(I know, everything’s the fault of those damn uppity teabaggers. Well, I prefer to be called a TEA Partier and we’re the ones who are trying to right the ship, thank you very much.)

So I think it’s long past time to stop the circular firing squad Republicans seem to have and point our guns in the correct direction, that being the record of the current occupant of the Oval Office. That also means those of you who don’t like Ron Paul should know that he would still be an improvement over Obama.

More importantly, though, it also means those of you who fervently support Ron Paul better listen well: if you get into a pouting snit over the next few weeks because he doesn’t get the nomination, GET OVER IT. Don’t go into the pout-whine sequence this fall and stay home on Election Day.

It’s highly likely that I won’t like the nominee either, but you better believe I’ll vote for him because it’s far easier to convince someone who’s 70 to 80 percent of what you like to continue in the right direction than to have someone on a full-throttle run the other way. That, my friends, is the situation we are in now. Despite the best efforts of many House Republicans (and a handful in the Senate) to dig in their heels, without the Oval Office and conservative majorities in both houses we are as effective as a sapling against a herd of buffalo, and I’m very tired of seeing the side of liberty being run down.

So now we know what some of the tricks up Obama’s sleeve are, and don’t believe they’re really calling bullshit on raising a billion dollars. That can buy a lot of votes, and they need to buy as many as they can get because a lot of people are fed up. The question is whether it’s the right group of people in the right states.

Somehow if the Democrats win the election with a minority of popular votes but a majority of the electoral votes, they’re not going to consider themselves illegitimate like they did George W. Bush. Don’t think it can’t happen again.

A thumb on the scale?

Last week before I took my little vacation I came across an article by Meg Tully and Bethany Rodgers in the Frederick News-Post regarding Roscoe Bartlett’s Congressional seat. We already know that, thanks to some serious gerrymandering by Annapolis Democrats, that the seat is no longer a fairly safe Republican one as it had been for the last ten years.

But I bring up the news item because of its last lines:

Voters in the proposed 6th District supported President Barack Obama in the 2008 election by 56.6 percent, according to a Maryland Democratic Party analysis. The Maryland Republican Party found that 57.45 percent voted for Obama in the proposed district.

But Alex Mooney, chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, said his group supports Bartlett.

“We’re definitely 100 percent behind his re-election efforts,” Mooney said.

I am too – if Bartlett wins the primary, of course. However, there are at least three Republicans who have announced they are running against Congressman Bartlett in the 2012 primary: Robert Coblentz, Joseph Krysztoforski, and Dave Wallace. It’s possible one of those gentlemen could garner enough support to oust the incumbent as Andy Harris did here in the First District back in 2008.

Perhaps Mooney was being a little inartistic in his remarks, but when conservatives have seen the party establishment throw their support behind the candidate they perceive as being most electable before the primary, well, that rubs us the wrong way.

Continue reading “A thumb on the scale?”

The same old story

For those of you unaware, today marks the end of the federal fiscal year. Supposedly at midnight tonight Fedzilla begains working from the FY2012 budget.

Except there is no such thing yet. Like this fiscal year, where Democrats in charge during 2010 failed to pass an actual budget and counted on continuing resolutions to keep the government going, those inside the Beltway will have to subsist on a continuing resolution or two or three until the budget is finally hammered out – don’t count on that anytime soon because fiscally conscious Republicans only control the House while the Senate and White House are controlled by spendthrift Democrats who never met an entitlement they didn’t like.

Continue reading “The same old story”

Odds and ends number 33

Hey, a Thursday night without some sort of Shorebirds update – whatever shall I do?

You know the drill: ‘odds and ends’ are those items I can’t justify a full post for, but are important enough for a paragraph or three.

Didn’t we already go through this whole government shutdown thing not that long ago? Well, here we go again.

Democrats in the Senate want to spend $6.9 billion on disaster relief, simply adding to the deficit. Meanwhile, the House rejected a plan which would have allocated $3.6 billion to disaster relief, part of which would be offset by cutting federal subsidies for electric cars. (This is the version Andy Harris voted for, although 48 conservative Republicans did not.)

I can understand where Harris is coming from, since some portion of that aid would likely come back to the northern reaches of our Congressional district. But I think the more conservative members who are holding out for more cuts are right, and Harris is wrong in this instance. I’m curious to know – how many of my readers are looking for a federal handout to assist them through cleaning up from Irene and Lee? Anyone? Bueller?

Let’s work our way back to the state level with a story told before – former beauty queen decides to get involved in politics decades after her days as a pageant contestant are over. If you answered “Sarah Palin” you would be correct but she’s not the subject of this brief portion of my post. Instead, this young lady was once Miss Delaware and was a semi-finalist for the Miss America crown in 1976. She now is Associate Director of the National Pro-Life Action Center in Washington, D.C.

Did I mention she is black? Or a Republican running for a vacated County Council seat in Prince George’s County?

Her name is Day Gardner, and she indeed fits all these categories. One thing I didn’t realize is that I have heard her speak at this rally, as she was also a Brian Murphy supporter. I remember she was a quite eloquent speaker, which makes sense if she was a pageant contestant in the old, pre-politically correct days. She’s even run for office before in 2002, finishing fourth of four in a House of Delegates race for District 23A.

Needless to say, when she gets 97 Republican votes in a primary that sees the Democratic winner pick up 3,570 – and he’s the near-namesake of a current member of the House of Delegates (Derrick Leon Davis as opposed to Delegate Dereck E. Davis)  – Day Gardner has an uphill battle. But stranger things have happened, and it’s good to see Republicans competing in PG County. I admire her tenacity and willingness to avoid political platitudes to get elected; she can plant the seed for future GOP success there.

Continue reading “Odds and ends number 33”

Is the TEA Party electoral poison?

Well, to answer the question, Rasmussen conducted a poll which stated 43 percent now see the TEA Party label as a negative. Of course they do, since the media constantly portrays the TEA Party as part of the problem and not part of the solution. I think the number around here who would agree with the 43% is only about half of that.

But the labeling trend is definitely not in the favor of those who believe in smaller, more limited government as independents dislike the TEA Party label by a 42-25 margin. Generally they are the ones who fall in the middle politically and supposedly it’s the great unwashed whose votes pile up on election day.

So here’s my message to the 43 percent: if you don’t buy the TEA Party and its message of limited government it’s only because you believe the lies told about the TEA Party by those who have a vested interest in keeping things just the way they are!

Do you want to know the way it is? We spend way too much money in government, and it’s money we create out of thin air. The question now isn’t if we’re heading into an inflationary era, but when and how much. It’s sort of like our experience with Hurricane Irene – some got a little wind, some got a little rain, but most had some sort of damage done to their towns and dwellings. All that differed was the degree.

So follow the money. If you didn’t get a raise last year or – worse – lost your job, well, what has the current big-spending government done for you? Maybe you’re getting some sort of transfer payment like unemployment benefits or food stamps but wouldn’t you really rather have the standard of living of being a productive full-time worker returned to you? As it stands you have less but government has more because they set the rules and print the money! Let my people go!

Continue reading “Is the TEA Party electoral poison?”

Harris slates townhall meeting

Sure, it’s kind of short notice and perhaps not the best time of day for us working folks but Congressman Andy Harris has scheduled a townhall meeting for tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday) from 4 to 5 p.m. at Adam’s Ribs in Fruitland.

Certainly there are a lot of topics which could be brought up – and it will be interesting to see if the moveon.org crowd or someone in a chicken suit shows up. But I’d like to hear what Harris has to say about getting the nanny state off our back. I understand that not a whole lot can be done while Democrats rule the roost in the White House and Senate, but there can be a number of opportunities for positive change in appropriations bills which have yet to be passed. We need to stay on the offensive.

But all in all I believe those of us who believe in the right things locally ought to come out and give our Congressman a show of support. Those few cranks protesting his office or donning a chicken suit aren’t the majority in this district or even this town – those who work hard to make a living despite the obstacles thrown up by government are. We just need not be silent or silenced.

Oh, and one more thing: it’s nice to see that our Congressman likes to show up in person for these townhall meetings. A phone call is so impersonal.

My purity

Subtitled, a comment which deserves a post.

On my mullings the other day about a Maryland General Assembly leadership fight I got a comment from Anne Arundel County political observer Jerry Shandrowsky. He noted:

You talk about demanding “some ideological purity among Republicans.” I think you really want blind partisanship.

Well, let’s assume for this argument that the reason a political party comes into being is that the adherents share a particular philosophy. In American history there have been numerous political parties, with some being so narrowly tailored that they basically focused on one issue (like the Prohibition Party, which is still around but is far removed from its heyday a century ago.) But the most successful parties have a much broader palette of issues they address, normally guided by a desire for some sort of social change. As examples, the Communist Party wishes to install a Soviet-style collectivist system of government, the Libertarian Party places a value on personal freedom and tends to promote isolationism as an extension of that, and the Green Party stresses environmental issues. It goes without saying that I’m not down with every aspect of the GOP platform, which was last revised prior to the rise of the TEA Party movement. In turn, though, there arguably would not have been a TEA Party movement had it not been for the dramatic shift in governance after the 2008 election.

Certainly I’ve been disappointed with Republicans before, and toeing the party line is often difficult when their highest vote-getter is not where I am philosophically (see McCain, John or more locally Gilchrest, Wayne or Ehrlich, Bob.) At that point I have to concede the aspect of moving the ball forward and simply hope not to lose a whole lot of ground, weighing the electability factor in. But I really, really hate having to vote against someone.

Yet there can be exceptions. There have been times where I’ve strayed from the GOP reservation to vote for what I saw as a more conservative alternative – yes, I was a Perot voter and there was a scenario I could have voted for a conservative Democrat over a moderate Republican last year. (It didn’t come to pass, though.)

So let’s look at an ongoing process I’m still working on – that of selecting a 2012 Presidential candidate to support. I’m going issue-by-issue trying to find statements and other ways candidates have addressed issues important to me. None of them have been perfect, and it’s interesting to note the wide variance in philosophies in the race. We have Republicans who veer left on a number of issues who are among the bottom-feeders. Others with a more libertarian streak score highly in some areas but fall well short in the area of foreign policy because I don’t tend to be an isolationist.

What I’m finding is that those candidates who are TEA Party favorites tend to score the highest, which is why Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain are doing the best. (Bear in mind as well that I haven’t graded Rick Perry, although I suspect he may fall somewhere in a group just below the top tier based on what I understand about his immigration stance – on the other hand he’s not a favorite of the establishment and that will help him in my eyes.) These are candidates who believe in limited, Constitutional government where decisions are made away from Washington, D.C. Of course, promises may not bring results but at least this is a way to separate the wheat from the chaff and (in most cases) the records don’t lie. (Obviously this makes a Cain candidacy somewhat of a crapshoot.)

Now consider what I said in my post about the Maryland General Assembly Republicans. Unlike the party leadership fight we had last December, where we had the debate over what philosophical direction the Maryland Republican Party needed to take and by proxy who would best lead them there, I didn’t have the chance to look at what was being said by the candidates. In this case I could only look at the way those in the running voted, so I did.

Unlike that party leadership election, I don’t have a ballot in the House GOP delegation’s process. Certainly I can encourage Delegates to make the proper decision but they make the call.

Now distill the TEA Party philosophy I’ve exhibited in my Presidential choice down to the leadership race. There are two candidates for each position, and in both cases one has voted as I would quite a bit more often than the other. If I’m concerned about the direction the Republican Party takes, wouldn’t I support those who vote in the manner I believe exhibits the philosophy of limited government the best? Why would I elect a leader I only agree with 50 to 70 percent of the time when I could have one I agree with 80 or 90 percent?

There’s no doubt I’d like the Maryland Republican Party to be a strong and viable force in state politics, and it’s my contention that we should be the conservative alternative to liberal, big-spending Democrats who love the nanny state. Leadership which can’t be counted on to stand firm to principle is worse than no leadership at all, and that’s the concern I expressed.

But when push comes to shove I’m a conservative first and a Republican second. I really hate it when I have to compromise because most of the time our side ends up losing valuable ground we had maintained prior to the compromise. Think of it as the reverse of “pushing back the frontiers of ignorance,” as Walter E. Williams likes to say.

We need to take a page from the other side – they never stop trying to usurp our freedom. If they can’t win an election, they’ll use the judiciary system. If they can’t pick the judge, their bureaucracy will govern by fiat. If their bureaucracy can’t impose its will they’ll mislead voters into electing them by prosing “hope and change” or to “drain the swamp.” And so the vicious cycle continues.

I say it’s time to reverse course. If you’re on the edge of a cliff facing forward, you’d better believe “R” is a better alternative than “D.”

The leadership fight to come

Last week Mark Newgent of Red Maryland gave us the story about a possible Republican leadership fight upcoming in the House of Delegates. According to Mark, the tag team of Delegates Nic Kipke and Michael Smigiel will challenge the current House Republican leadership of Delegates Tony O’Donnell and Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio for the positions of Minority Leader and Whip, respectively.

The upstart pair are challenging the current leadership based on two separate but related items: the House GOP establishment “leading from behind” on the in-state tuition for illegal immigrants petition and a perceived lack of fiscal conservatism, especially from Delegate Haddaway-Riccio.

Well, let’s look at the record, shall we?

In 2011, Kipke was alone among his leadership peers (the group of four including O’Donnell, Haddaway-Riccio, and Smigiel) in voting for the Invest Maryland boondoggle. He was also the only vote among the four to allow the expansion of suits brought for workplace discrimination to include places of public accommodation, which will subject small businesses to harassing lawsuits from aggrieved members of the general public as well as disgruntled employees. Kipke also voted to extend unemployment benefits via SB882, which also depends on so-called ‘stimulus’ funding.

And that’s not a new trend. In 2010 Kipke was the sole member of the group to vote for the pro-union ‘Fairness in Negotiations’ Act, along with accepting the $126 million federal bailout of our unemployment fund (with strings attached, of course) and the 2010 version of the “bond bill.”

You may not be able to access my monoblogue Accountability Project records because I placed them off the public website – but I can still dig them out. And I did.

In retrospect over the 2007-10 term, neither O’Donnell nor Smigiel consistently voted in such a manner to annoy me – in my Accountability Project scoring system Tony O’Donnell ranked 3rd for the 2007-10 term and Smigiel was 17th, in part because he missed a number of votes in 2009 (the absences lowered his overall score.) Otherwise Michael would have likely landed in the top 10.

On the other hand, Haddaway-Riccio ranked a very pedestrian 27th while Kipke was behind her in 29th place. (Bear in mind that there were only 37 Republican members of the House of Delegates at the time, with the lowest Republican – the late Delegate Page Elmore – ranking 39th overall.)

To quote the Newgent Red Maryland piece, it’s Smigiel who “wants a fiscally conservative leadership team ‘willing to fight for the conservative principles they expound.'” The question, then, is why he hitched his wagon to Nic Kipke given Kipke’s penchant for going along to get along with the other side on a number of key issues? (I really didn’t get into the environmental side of things where he and Haddaway-Riccio both cast votes in favor of the “Sustainable Growth Commission,” ‘Sustainable Communities,’ or the Chesapeake Conservation Corps. How is encouraging top-down state planning and little green community organizers in any way conservative, fiscally or otherwise?)

Personally I don’t think it’s wrong to demand some ideological purity among Republicans with a base in conservative principles – especially in the leadership – and it’s really making me wonder who is encouraging Kipke and Smigiel to pick this fight just before the Special Session, a time where we need strength in numbers and good strategy to thwart the massive tax increases planned by the Democrats.

Perhaps O’Donnell was behind the curve on the SB167 petition issue, but those who have been rooted in the way things always have been done tend to be the most resistant to change. Yet the Republicans in the House of Delegates this time around did a lot of good because they generally possessed a united front. Unfortunately, it seemed like one of the weakest links to that front was Nic Kipke – and, based on his legislative record, now is no time to go wobbly by placing him in leadership.