Archive for the ‘GOP’ Category

I’ve been a fan of Gov Daniels since he was GW’s chief of OMB. His performance in Indiana is nothing short of amazing in turning around the finances of a state in decline.

Why Mitch Daniels is on the 2012 Short List

When Daniels took office in 2004, Indiana, which had been enduring Democratic governors for 16 years, was running an $800 million deficit. Four years later, it had a $1.3 billion surplus. Daniels accomplished this without raising taxes (as 66 percent of states have done); in fact, he passed the largest tax cut in state history. Nor did he cut essential services like education, as 40 states have done. As Mark Hemingway reported in National Review, “In the last three years, the state has repaid $760 million to schools and local governments that had been appropriated to finance the state’s deficit spending.” Additionally, Indiana has hired 800 new child welfare caseworkers and 250 state troopers, all while cutting the rate of increase in state spending from 5.9 to 2.8 percent annually.

Daniels has successfully courted business investment and has welcomed “two Toyota plants, a Honda factory, a $500 million Nestlé facility, and a British Petroleum project that will bring $3.8 billion to the state …”

This is a laboratory of successful conservative governance. As Daniels put it to NR, “Our health-care plan is health savings accounts for poor people. Our telecommunications policy is deregulation. Our infrastructure policy was the biggest privatization in state history.” And his spending policy was less is more.

Continue reading…..

2012 election, Gov Mitch Daniels Indiana, GOP

More statism from the Progressive Republican Sen. John McCain. The bill was presented to the Cmte on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Feb. 4th. It’s now 6 days later and there’s still no text on the bill. Co-sponsor of the bill is Sen. Dorgan (D-ND).

From what I’ve read it looks like this bill give supreme control to the FDA over any vitamin or supplement ever making it to a store shelf.

The title of the bill is: “A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to more effectively regulate dietary supplements that may pose safety risks unknown to consumers.”

Apparently the motivation for this bill is due to professional athletic use of steroids. A physician involved with supplement use and development in treating cancer has written a letter to Sen. McCain, here’s an excerpt:

Though I suspect you and your staff created this new bill with the good intention of protecting the public, as I read information about the bill, it appears to give the FDA near-dictatorial control over the manufacture and availability of supplements, allow them at their own arbitrary discretion to remove legitimate nutritional supplements from the marketplace, file complaints against particular legitimate supplements at their whim, and impose drug testing standards on each supplement. Testing of a single product to meet FDA standards for marketing of a new drug alone can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. No supplement company to my knowledge has the resources to fight or meet such regulatory impositions. As an end result, ethical supplement companies as they currently exist would, again if I read the bill correctly, be forced to shut down.

I have read that you are motivated by recent scandals involving the doping of athletes with illegal steroids, certainly a terrible tragedy, and have been approached by various professional athletic organizations such as Major League Baseball. I believe these organizations are trying to shift blame from their athletes to the supplement industry. Regardless, the FDA already possesses power to investigate and punish companies marketing and selling steroids improperly – the issue at stake here – and requires no additional authority to do so. It certainly does not now need added control over properly manufactured and properly marketed supplements or food substances and the companies that provide these products, in order to regulate illicit steroid spiking.

I suppose, on the surface, the bill sounds innocent enough, requiring manufacturers to provide the FDA with ingredients, etc. But current Good Manufacturing regulations to my understanding already require that supplement companies must provide proof of ingredients and quality. This proposed bill, whatever your stated goal, appears to play into the FDA’s long standing animus against the supplement industry at large, which to date has some protection from capricious regulatory harassment under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). I believe, based on years of study, that such FDA antagonism even against ethically manufactured supplements stems from its close working relationship with the drug company giants. Like the FDA, the drug industry has sought for years to have supplements removed from the over-the-counter marketplace and transformed into prescription drugs which they alone could control and market and for which they could charge enormous prices, as is the case with any other drug. You seem to have played right into this effort.

Read the letter…

Hopefully, this bill will go no where because I highly doubt it would be possible to ‘educate’ McCain into changing his propensity to allow government to intrude into our lives more under the guise of ‘protecting’ us.

S.3002, Supplement Safety Act 2010, DSSA, Sen John McCain, Sen Byron Dorgan, FDA, steriods

PEW’s most recent poll on “What the Public Knows” is confirming for me but not surprising. Republicans are more informed than Democrats yet on the whole, Americans are uniformed unless it comes to popular culture or ‘Hollyweird’.

Public Knowledge: Senate Legislative Process a Mystery to Many

The public has consistently expressed strong interest in the health care debate, but relatively few Americans can correctly answer two key questions related to the Senate’s consideration of health care legislation.

In the latest installment of the Pew Research Center’s News IQ Quiz, just 32% know that the Senate passed its version of the legislation without a single Republican vote. And, in what proved to be the most difficult question on the quiz, only about a quarter (26%) knows that it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster1 in the Senate and force a vote on a bill. The survey was conducted before Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown won a special election to the Senate on Jan. 19; Brown’s election means Senate Democrats can no longer count on a 60-vote majority once he takes office.

snip…Republicans More Knowledgeable on Many Issues
Republicans, on average, answered one more question correctly than Democrats (5.9 vs. 4.9 correct). These differences are partly a reflection of the demographics of the two groups; Republicans tend to be older, well educated and male, which are characteristics associated with political and economic knowledge. Still, even when these factors are held constant, Republicans do somewhat better than Democrats on the knowledge quiz.

There’s more unsurprising results when looking at the knowledge gap with young vs. older Americans.

Continue reading…..

PEW, American knowledge, American Government

These ‘insiders’ think they are going to attract tea partiers and the grass roots. What these yahoos fail to realize is that most tea partiers are Conservatives and that’s why they left the GOP. So, here’s a group of RINO’s who think the answer is to be Democrat light or as Glenn Beck likes to call them as the Republican Progressives.

From the WSJ Online – Republican Leaders Forming New Political Group

At least half a dozen leaders of the Republican Party have joined forces to create a new political group with the goal of organizing grass-roots support and raising funds ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to people familiar with the effort.

The organizational details of the group, expected to be called the American Action Network, are still being worked out, but it is expected to contain both a 501(c)3 and a 501(c)4 component. In simpler terms, a 501(c)3 can advocate on policy matters while a 501(c)4 is an election arm.

Republican leaders expected to be affiliated with the group include former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Bush adviser Karl Rove, Republican strategist Ed Gillespie, and Republican donor Fred Malek.

This will also go no where with the grass roots. All this will do is pull the large dollar donors from the RNC, RNSC and RNCC since most of the Tea Partiers and grass roots have stopped donating to any of these groups. These people are so stuck on their own narrative they don’t have a clue what is driving the grass roots.

American Action Network, Norm Coleman, Karl Rove, Haley Barbour, Jeb Bush, Ed Gillespie, Fred Malek

Consider that the Townhallers and the Tea Partiers have been called everything from Nazis to birthers and fanatics – the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, and ask yourself if you feel “represented” by the people running our country. Consider the backroom deals and greased palms and the souls being sold to garner Federal funds for their home states, even if it means killing a few babies along the way, and ask yourself if these are the sorts of people that make you proud to be an American.

Harry Reid comes out asking for civility in the Senate after he accuses Republicans of killing Americans and Whitehouse (D-RI)does his rant of name calling. And what does the GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell do? He doesn’t come out and tell Reid to start the civility himself or quote some of the recent hysterical comments made by Democrats. No, he comes out and passively talks about how they are all working together. It’s no wonder the Democrats have pushed this through, with GOP leadership like this?  And Lamar Alexander is an even bigger milktoast than McConnell.

The only civility existing in the Senate is with the GOP. Stop with the civility. It’s too late to fight this monster since the GOP never did find it’s spine to fight. If it weren’t for Sen. Jim Demint the Senate GOP would be no different than a jellyfish.

Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, senate healthcare fight

Yes, last week proves once again the fraudulent claims of the global warming alarmists. Hackers dumped a bunch of info from a key UK global warming advocacy university (Univ of East Anglia Climate Research). Stories of dummied up temperature numbers, blocking of any research refuting their claims, ignoring the decrease in temperatures, deleting of data they don’t like since it doesn’t fit their agenda and just plain hiding data.

Will this stop any of the morons from believing in ‘climate change’ or global warming? Never. Just like government run healthcare, this is all about power, control and money. The truth will not set you free. Especially when the US has weak minded Representatives and Senators who give credence to global warming. Yes, I’m talking to you Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gov Tim Pawlenty, Sen. Bob Corker, Sen Lamar Alexander, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and the list goes on.

From Ed Morrisissey at Hot Air – Do hacked e-mails show global-warming fraud?

One of the most damning e-mails published comes from Dr. Jones himself. In an e-mail from almost exactly ten years ago, Jones appears to discuss a method of overlaying data of temperature declines with repetitive, false data of higher temperatures:

snip….Andrew Bolt points to a couple of other suspicious entries in the database as well for the Herald-Sun. For instance, here we have scientists discussing how to delete inconvenient data in order to emphasize other data that supports their conclusions:

snip….Hmmm. Sounds like “hid[ing] the data” once again. And here we have them privately admitting that they can’t find the global warming that they’ve been predicting:

Redstate also has The Great Global Warming Fraud.. There are some of the same people who are global warming alarmists who were ice age alarmists back in the 1970’s, just think they are still making money off of fraudulent climate scams yet call themselves ’scientists’ and ‘researchers’ at prominent universities. Just shows you the idiots in those ivory towers of supposed education.

global warming, hackers east anglia climate research, junk science

Michael Steele is once again on his strange apology tour for all ‘us’ racist Republicans. If Steele believes this is the way to promote and garner support from Tea Partiers and grassroot activists he is failing. We all know those that live and work in the Beltway of DC have strange and distorted views on those of us who live in flyover land and constitute the base of the GOP. Steele is your typical out of touch ‘moderate’ Republican who needs the love of the left wing media to make them feel good about themselves. To receive the love of the media, the first requirement is to denigrate the grassroots base of the Republican Party.

Michael Steele: Some white Republicans are scared of me

MARTIN: But your candidates got to talk to them. One of the criticisms I’ve always had is Republicans — white Republicans — have been scared of black folks.

STEELE: You’re absolutely right. I mean I’ve been in the room and they’ve been scared of me. I’m like, “I’m on your side” and so I can imagine going out there and talking to someone like you, you know, [you're like,] “I’ll listen.” And they’re like “Well.” Let me tell you. You saw in Christie and you saw in McDonnell a door open because they went in and engaged. McDonnell was very deliberate about spending –

Mr. Steele, I strongly advise you to stay away from my neck of the woods because I’m sure that if you were in my presence you’d be skeered out of your teeny tiny Beltway brain.  I don’t need your brand of Republicanism, nor do I want you to be the one promoting the GOP due to your contorted view of just what a Republican should represent.

Here’s what I (and CWAN) believe the Republican Party should represent:

CWAN Tenets

November 7, 2009

The Republican Party is fond of saying they are the party of the Big Tent in that not everyone will agree with each other 100% of the time. How far to the left before the tent no longer covers a candidate or an idea?

CWAN believes the tent has been tethered to a ship that is being steered to the Left. While Republicans have professed to believe in smaller government and limited spending, they have expanded government under their watch(1).

CWAN believes that our government is based on a two party system and we will remain in the Republican Party. However, we will promote conservative Republicans and support only those candidates who agree and vote these values.

CWAN Beliefs

1. No taxes can be levied on the American people by a treaty, or by a foreign government or foreign entity such as the United Nations.

2. The sanctity of marriage is defined as between one adult man and one adult woman.

3. There will be no taxpayer funded abortions.

4. Congress should specify the source of it’s authority under the U.S. Constitution for the enactment of laws, and for other purposes. (H.R. 1359, Enumerated Powers Act, 110th Congress)

5. Judicial candidates to be approved should adhere to the principles of interpreting the law rather than usurping the authority given by the U.S. Constitution to the Legislative Branch.

6. The U.S. Constitution grants citizens the rights to keep and bear arms for their protection without restrictions.

(1) Republicans held both federal chambers from 1995 to 2006 and the Presidency from 2000 to 2008. During this time, yearly spending has doubled (from $5,312B to $9,007B) as has the deficit (from $1.5T to $2.7T).

Conservative Women’s Action Network

Michael Steele, CWAN, CWAN tenets, GOP Big Tent, GOP principles

They bought a very liberal Republican candidate in Dede Scozzafava. I prefer the term DIABLO. But this is what happens when Republicans ignore a more Conservative candidate over a candidate who is more Democrat than Republican.

DIABLO = Democrat In All But Label Only

Scozzafava is a Democrat except for her party label. If you don’t know, here’s her background. I saw Newt on Fox News yesterday where he finally came out in support of Hoffman, too late Newt. You’ve already soiled yourself. And to Romney the waffler, nice leadership. You must be taking lessons from the dithering Obama.

The Republican leadership spent almost a million dollars on a candidate and this time their grassroots base revolted and succeeded in showing the beltway GOP elitists where they can shove their money! Nice job of alienating your base in a time when the GOP desperately needs their base support. What did they get for their money, yesterday Dede Scozzafava came out and endorsed the Democrat candidate in the NY-23 race. At the very minimum Scozzafava could have kept her mouth shut when she dropped out of the race but nope, she had to come out and endorse the Democrat. That’s because Scozzafava is a DIABLO!

This isn’t the first time this has happened. The RNC has a history with candidates like this. Erick Erickson at Redstate gives a few examples of this same scenario happening.

We hear this all time — conservatives in the GOP have to play nice with the moderates.

We never hear the other, that moderates should play nice with conservatives. Why is that? Consider the facts:

In Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, conservative Tim Walberg challenged the very liberal Joe Schwartz in the 2006 Republican Primary and won. Walberg went on to win the general election.

In 2008, Schwartz endorsed Democrat Mark Schauer and Shauer used that endorsement to squeak out a win in this +2 Republican District.

There’s more examples at the link. The most obvious example of course is Arlen Specter who the RNSC endorsed over the more conservative Pat Toomey, Specter is now a Democrat! They are pulling the same old story with the Florida Senate race for 2010, endorsing and backing the very liberal Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio who is an up and comer conservative candidate.

If the Republican establishment doesn’t wake up, change their leadership 2010 will not be the sea of change they are expecting.

RNC, RNCC, NY-23, Dede Scozzafava, Doug Hoffman, RINO, DIABLO, GOP

One of the best acronyms I’ve seen lately. Mark Steyn wrote a blurb on The Corner talking about the special election in NY District 23. This race has heated up tremendously but Mark Steyn came up with a perfect description for someone of Dede Scozzaflava or Arlen Specter’s ilk.

DIABLO – Democrat In All But Label Only!

Newt really needs to re-think his support for Dede Scozzafava. This isn’t RINO but DIABLO – Democrat In All But Label Only. It’s not one of those “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” bi-swinger deals — not when you’re pro-”stimulus”, pro-cash-for-clunkers. And the reductive argument that her sole redeeming value – a willingness to vote for John Boehner as Speaker — is reason enough to support her is silly in a special election. If he’s ever Speaker, Boehner won’t be till January 2011, and it’s 12 months premature for Newt to be telling voters they need to suck it up and accept that a handful of Jim-Jeffords-in-embryo-form are necessary for the Republican tide.

Now if I could only find an image that depicts a DIABLO….

DIABLO, RINO, GOP, NY-23, Dede Scozzaflava, RNC, RNCC

A few years back Newt Gingrich paired with Hillary Clinton on healthcare and then he followed it up with an ad with Nancy Pelousi on the perils of Global Warming.  The healthcare gig with Clinton was enough for me to seriously doubt anything coming out Gingrich’s mouth or writings.  I long ago wrote off the NRSC and the NRCC as nothing but tools for statists and the entrenched Beltway Republicans ala George Bush and Karl Rove. 

So now, the NRCC has convinced Gingrich to endorse a Congressional candidate who isn’t even a RINO, she’s a Democrat in sheep clothing.  I know it’s NY but it’s not NYC.  There is nothing about this woman’s political career that even resembles the Republican platform.

In a special election for NY District 23 Dede Scozzafava has been the endorsed GOP candidate in lieu of a true Republican Doug Hoffman.

From Redstate:
Scozzafava :

* Supports the Obama stimulus
* Supports card check
* Supports Cash for Clunkers
* Supports Davis Bacon
* Refuses to sign no tax pledge
* Refuses to sign no pork pledge
* Voted to force all NY state employees to pay union dues
* Voted for higher taxes 190 times
* Voted for a bank bailout
* Has not demonstrated any support for school choice

Hoffman :

* Against the Obama stimulus
* Against card check
* Against Cash for Clunkers
* Against Davis Bacon
* Signed tax pledge
* Signed pork pledge
* Supports school choice

Which of these candidates sounds like the real Republican to you?

Additionally, Scozzafava is the ACORN backed candidate. And now we find out that Gingrich has endorsed Scozzafava.

Tea partiers and GOP regulars scuffle in N.Y. House race

In Pennsylvania, Sen. Arlen Specter earlier this year defected to the Democrats in the face of a strong Republican primary challenge from conservative former Rep. Pat Toomey, a Republican and former head of the anti-tax Club for Growth, which is backing his run.

The same players are flocking to Mr. Hoffman, a businessman with no political experience. The Club for Growth is pouring $250,000 into his campaign and a pair of one-time Republican presidential hopefuls, Mr. Huckabee and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, have announced their support.

“I think it’s a combination of people seeing what the two major-party candidates are all about and what they’re seeing is business as usual in Washington,” Hoffman campaign spokesman Rob Ryan said. “The voters are tired of that and I think that’s why you have a third-party candidate right in the middle of this battle making it into a horse race.”

snip…Rep. Pete Sessions, chairman of the NRCC, predicted Mrs. Scozzafava will woo back conservative voters with Mr. Gingrich’s endorsement and by signing a no-tax pledge from Americans for Tax Reform, a group that had criticized Mrs. Scozzafava for not signing.

The GOP and it’s committees just aren’t getting the message that it’s Conservative base isn’t going along with them anymore. I guess Mike Pence is holding out against endorsing Scozzafava yet Jeb Hensarling of the NRSC is going out whole hog for a candidate that doesn’t even resemble a Republican. Promoting more Olympia Snowe’s will only alienate the base even more from GOP.

Dede Scozzafava, Doug Hoffman, NY-23, Newt Gingrich.NRSC, NRCC, Jeb Hensarling, Mike Pence,