I Love This

Over at Patterico's Pontifications, he talks about Juan Williams defining everything a GOP candidate says as thinly-concealed racism.

Williams says:

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

Patterico's response is pretty good, and you can read it here, but I especially like what commenter "Milhouse" had to say in reply:

"...The game the left is playing is an old one: get universal agreement that X is bad, and then slowly shift the definition of X to include more and more things that were never agreed to be bad. The syllogism goes “If X is bad, and Y is X, then Y must be bad.” But the correct response is “Y was never bad before, and it doesn’t become bad by defining it as X..."

YES. That HAS TO be our message. If, like me, you're sick to death of liberal democrats defining any idea or statement they can't fight or refute as "racism", then we need to take that message as wide as we can. Talking about food stamps, entitlements, work ethic, etc. were never racist before, so they're not now.

All presidential candidates have faced opposition before, but now all opponents to Obama, either in 2008 or 2012, are racist? No, because opposition to the president was never racist before, so it's not now.

President Obama has been a cataclysmic failure as president. It wasn't racist to point this out about George W. Bush, or any president before him, so it isn't racist to do so about Obama.

Why the Hell Aren't You Running?!

So why aren't you running for President?

So why aren't you taking this message national?

I've said in a previous post that the reason we now have a field of four candidates that no one really wants to vote for is because the right people aren't running. Senators Allen West and Paul Ryan once more have shown that they are two people who should have been in this race to begin with and yet they chose to sit this fight out.

Senator West, your declaration of war would sound so much more convincing on the national stage. Senator Ryan, are you aware that most people believe Republicans control the Senate and are therefore responsible for the current "do-nothing" Congress?

Get your hat in the ring, guys. America is too important to let this election just be a regular battle between the lesser of two evils.

West/Ryan 2012 for America!

I'm Not Threatened By a Romney Presidency

Nope. You didn't read that wrong.

Make no mistake; I'm not FOR Romney. I actually really dislike the guy. I'll never support him whole-heartedly. It breaks my heart that we seem willing to once again settle for the lesser of two evils, especially after we saw what happened in the last election, where a mere politician with a record slimmer than a greeting card and a sketchy past was blown up to be a modern messiah, only to be used as a rubber-stamp to approve the sort of America-killing legislation, crony capitalism and social programs the Left has been wanting for decades, while hiding behind the accusation of racism against any and all critics.

After three years of Obama, I really expected the fighters of the Right to come out and run for office, just like they did in the House/Senate/Gubernatorial races of 2010. Maybe that was my mistake. Maybe the Tea Party candidates really thought they'd do the most good at the state level, or in Congress, rather than the White House. Well, now that Obama has shown that he's willing to illegally bypass Congress to get what he wants, we know how effective our Tea Party candidates are there.

So, the Allen Wests, Marco Rubios, Sarah Palins, Paul Ryans, etc. of the Right decided to sit this one out, allowing the same old Rockefeller Republican candidates to emerge from the woodwork; most of them sitting on their fat asses and making money for the past several years, and quickly the only ones worth voting for were removed from the field. Most shot themselves in the foot (I maintain that what lost Herman Cain support wasn't that allegations were made against him, but how he reacted to the allegations) and now we're left with five men that nobody--NOBODY--is exactly thrilled to have to vote for.

And, in the current crop of candidates, really only one man has the support to go the distance. By now, if Mitt Romney isn't the nominee, I'll be surprised. It's horrible, but it's true. Our fighters chose not to fight, so now we're running a capitulator; one that I feel truly has no chance to win.

But on that note, assuming that Romney is the nominee, I hope he DOES win, and assuming he's the nominee he has my marginal support. Why? Because he's not Barack Obama.

While Romney is certainly a flip-flopper who is, for the most part, a moderate RINO guilty of some horrible acts of leftism, he is not at all a driven socialist with an agenda to "fundamentally transform" America. At heart, Romney is driven by a passionate love for, and need to protect and defend, Mitt Romney. If he feels that he will be loved more by the people by being conservative and undoing the harm Barack Obama has done, if he genuinely feels like that will earn him two terms, then that's what he'll do. Of course, he will engage in the sort of quid pro quo appeasment of his leftist opponents, he will allow Congress to shift to the Left again, he will probably not do too terribly much to undo Obamacare (considering it's based on the model he created for Massechussets) and he will probably not be liked by most people.

But between a man who's out for himself and wants the adulation of America vs. a man with a clear agenda to turn America into Greece or China, between a man who will secure our borders vs. a man who advocates open borders and bows to our enemies, the choice there is clear, and I'm not threatened by it. I'd rather have a caretaker president who doesn't really improve things than an activist president determinedly making things worse. Romney will attempt to make conservatives happy some of the time. Obama will continue to treat us as if we don't exist, or are a "fringe" movement.

Again, it saddens me that Romney is really the best we can do, and let me re-iterate; I don't think he'll win. I think he's the kind of squishy candidate Obama won't have a hard time destroying. It's already begun, and considering that there's a lot wrong with Mitt Romney, by the time he's the nominee his candidacy will already be down for the count. But if he's the nominee, I hope he does win. At least under him, things may not get any better, but they won't get worse.

How Liberals View Things

I was inspired by John Hawkins's "How to Speak Liberal" post over at rightwingnews to take a look at how a liberal views things in society as a whole vs. how a conservative views things.

Here are a few examples:

The News: CNN or the Alphabet networks, or if you're in the car, National Public Radio. On the net, cnn.com or Yahoo or MSN. These people tell you the news. You can tell it's really real news because they all report on it the same way and from the same perspective. MSNBC is also news but with a bit more opinion thrown in. Fox News is not news at all because they report on things the others don't, and from a different perspective.

Lies: Something that is different from what I believe or what I think I know to be true. If I see something on the News, I know that's true. When I see something on Fox, I know it's a lie because it's different from what I saw on the News. If I read The Huffington Post or The Daily Kos, I know they're telling the truth because they say the same things and from the same perspective as the News, so it must be true. Other truth-tellers out there are Jon Stewart, Michael Moore, Bill Maher and any Hollywood actor who gets political, because they say the same things too. Other sites like townhall.com, American Thinker, the BIG websites, etc. and Hollywood has-beens like Jon Voight, Kelsey Grammer or Dennis Miller are liars.

Racist: Someone who is against Barack Obama, or the Democrats in general. After all, Americans have always embraced higher taxes, socialism, Big Government, universal health care that you cannot opt out of, stricter gun control, etc. But elect a black president and suddenly all of those core American values go out the window, all because of evil racists on the Right.

Extremism: Right-wing philosophy of any sort. Some examples of extremism include, but are not limited to: keeping marriage defined as the union of a man and a woman (regardless of whether or not they're okay with civil unions for others), belief in God (unless it's Allah), a wish to be allowed to own a gun for personal protection, exhibiting skepticism, based on a lack of hard evidence or conflicting evidence, about global warming, believing in lower taxes and unobtrusive government, cherishing civil liberty for everyone, not just themselves and their friends, and teaching children about sexual responsibility while questioning the wisdom of handing out condoms to children after teaching them just the mechanics of sex. Some non-extremist positions include: changing the definition of marriage to whatever we want it to mean, refusing to believe in any sort of higher power, and ridiculing those who do, outlawing guns (because if they're outlawed, nobody will ever be able to get one), believing wholesale in global warming while denying any conflicting evidence exists, and calling skeptics "deniars" just like Fundamentalists do to atheists, wanting to raise taxes on "the rich" while having government decide our lives for us, cherishing our own civil liberties while wanting to limit those liberties for anyone who doesn't agree with us, and teaching children all about sex, how to be good at it, handing them condoms, and then sort of muttering "butwaituntilyoureolder" somewhere toward the end of your lesson.

The Rich: Greedy, selfish corporations who made all their money on the backs of the poor. None of them got where they are honestly, and all of them keep the poor downtrodden by outsourcing all their jobs overseas. They should be taxed higher and higher, because the fact that they keep hoarding all their money and not letting anyone else have it is entirely the reason why poverty exists and why the US is in debt. We should force them to give us all their money. Then there will be no rich, and everybody will be poor..and we'll all be...happier...

Religion: Something only weak-minded, non-modernized people engage in. Basically, they're stupid enough to believe in the invisible sky fairy, but not open-minded enough to believe in the unquestionable reality that unless we stop using light bulbs and cars, the earth is going to become a frozen, arrid, flooded, dryed-out ocean waste land. We tolerant liberals should mock and degrade them for their beliefs, because in a free society where everyone can do as they like, there is no room for religion. Besides, religion is restrictive, and doesn't let everybody do what they want. Oh, I almost forgot; this entire paragraph does not apply if the religion in question is Islam, Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Wicca or...well, any religion except Christianity, Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness or Judaism.

Science: Something that is always right. As long as it continues to affirm global warming and deny creationism.

Why Haven't our GOP Hopefuls Beat This Drum?

The president's campaign strategy is to distract attention from his record of failure by attacking a do-nothing Congress. He has pointed his finger (yet again) at Republicans for putting the interests of the rich one percent over the welfare of the rest. President Obama has used this bogeyman to justify actions that, had a Republican taken them, would be bandied about the media as grounds for impeachment.--Ed Lasky



Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/obamas_political_ploys_could_backfire.html#ixzz1izVKIumb

So...WHY AREN'T ANY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES SAYING THIS VERY THING!!!

We bloggers, and others in the New Media, have been saying this for years now. Look at Obama's laundry list of failures, the scandals that have cropped up, the power grabs, look at all that! Obamacare, the Stimulus bill, Cash for Clunkers, Solyndra, Fast & Furious, Lightsquared, Crony Capitalism, Class Warfare, the Cordry appointment, and I could go on and on an on. If this kind of crap were committed by a Republican president, he'd be a one-termer, I have no doubt. Yet Obama may swing a second term, and it's because his competition isn't taking the fight to him.

One of the Republican candidates is openly an Obama supporter; that would be John Huntsman. We can't expect him to bring the fight to Obama because he's on Obama's side. Why this man is running for president is beyond me.

Ron Paul, aside from the same personal talking points he's been repeating for years, isn't concerned with anything. At all.

Newt Gingrich has put the press on the defensive in the past, but has so far failed to hammer home the above points about Obama.

Rick Perry probably forgot the third thing Obama is guilty of.

Rick Santorum doesn't seem to understand this isn't a fight between morality and unmorality but the destruction of America vs. those who are fighting to save it.

I call on all our candidates to excoriate Barack Obama's systematic undoing of America, and pointing out all the areas where Obama has broken the law and gone against the consitution. Fail to do this, and welcome him back for four more years.

In fact, fail to do this, and you aren't worthy of the office of president.

Romney and the the Not-Romneys

In my last post I concluded that of the current men still in the race, nobody wants to vote FOR any of them, but would only be voting AGAINST Obama. I also said that's not good enough.

It was, essentially, what happened in the last race. My father said once "There were no votes for John McCain. There were only votes against Obama." And as we all saw in Nov. 2008, that wasn't enough.

So here we are in the last year of Obama's first term. We've seen quite a few fighting Tea Party politicians rise up on the right in that time. Now we have Allen West, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Rand Paul, Jeff Landry and Tim Scott, among others; politicians who can all directly thank the Tea Party for putting them where they are. When was the last time a grass roots movement affected that kind of change?

As I also said in my last post, that enthusiasm appears to have dampened and the fighters we saw in 2010 have given way to the same old establishment Fat Cats the GOP always trots out to run for president. The names change (sometimes) but the players remain the same.

Currently left in the race are Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, John Huntsman and Rick Santorum.

Of the six of them, only John Huntsman has yet to be a serious challenger to the Anointed Candidate, Willard Mitt Romney, a man whom the GOP establishment likes, whom the Left wants to see nominated, and who the conservative base could not possibly dislike more. The only problem is, out of six lumps of shit, how do you decide which lump is the least shit-like?

It seems the latest Not-Romney is Rick Santorum, a man I've personally never really been behind. I will say this to start off with; in a contest of Santorum vs. Obama the better choice is clear. However, we haven't gotten there yet, and Santorum's ability to convince the center-right that he's worth voting for has yet to be proven.

See, here's the thing; while the GOP establishment is focused on who's going to bring in independent or undecided voters while pretty much ignoring anyone who appeals to the base, the arch-conservatives now seem to be getting behind one of their own, despite the fact that many of the conservative base doesn't really care for him.

It's pretty clear that Santorum's rise is really nothing more than the latest attempt to have a Not-Romney for our candidate, but there's a reason it's taken this long to get to him. Santorum may be an arch-conservative, but he also seems to be the kind of arch-conservative the Left would like people to think all of us are. In a couple of the books he's written he DOES seem to be advocating Big Government...run by arch-conservatives. He's staunchly anti-gay marriage, to the point where he seems to actually be against the right of people to live their private lives as they want. Agree or disagree with homosexuality; it is a basic human right in America to be gay. Start trying to take that away and you're no better than an arch-liberal, just from the other side.

Now, whether or not Santorum would actually attempt to enact legislation that would "ban gayness" (I don't think he would), having an openly anti-gay president probably just won't happen in today's world, and for what it's worth, it shouldn't happen. If Santorum's religious beliefs state that homosexuality is a sin, that's up to him. But that should remain a personal religious stance, not a political stance from which he would dictate policy. Bottom line is; the government should stay out of everybody's bedrooms, not just the ones where the activity within is one they approve of. It's part of limited government and personal liberty. Sometimes people are going to do things with that liberty, and the limits of government to impede upon it, that said government doesn't like. Whether that's christians worshipping freely or dudes having sex with dudes, a conservative government would not attempt to legislate it one way or the other, nor should it.

The other problem with Santorum is that he doesn't come off as likable, in large part from what I said above and in equal part the way he's come off as a whiner and a wimp in debate performances. Complaining about the placement of your podium? That's supposed to be presidential?

Now, between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, yeah, okay, let's go with Santorum. At least he stands for something. But is he really the best we can do? Is he even the best one running?

Rick Perry recently ticked off a lot of people with his gay soldiers ad, but that may have been a poorly-calculated move to engraciate himself with the Republican base, not realizing that the Republican base is mostly okay with gay soldiers serving openly. We do have a problem when they abuse the system and claim it's because of being treated unfairly as a gay man (or woman) but by all means, if you're a gay man or woman who wants to serve their country, why would any sane person seek to prohibit that?

Personally I don't think Rick Perry would attempt to legislate against homosexuality. I don't even think he'd attempt to outlaw gay marriage on a national scale. I DO think Santorum might try that, or at least, he would speak openly of wanting to. Believe it or not, that's not a conservative stance; it's a religious fundamentalist stance. And while there are a ton of conservatives in America, religious fundamentalists are getting fewer.

Rick Perry, however, does seem like George W. Bush II in all the wrong ways. I don't know if I can still support him. He's also sinking in the polls. I know I'm not a Santorum fan. I think Gingrich is a fighter and knows this is a war, while the others think it's just a presidential election, but he's starting to under-perform. Ron Paul and John Huntsman are beneath consideration.

So are we really at Romney vs. Santorum? And how long will it be before Santorum falls? Are we really stuck with Romney as our given candidate?

If so, we're screwed.

Why the Lame Parade? The Right People Refuse to Run.

Hey, Allen West. Hey, Marco Rubio. Hey, Paul Ryan. Hey, Bobby Jindal. Hey, Sarah Palin.

Guys, really. Where are you? Why are you hiding in your cozy little states, refusing to affect the kind of positive change you have enacted on a state level on a national one?

Allen West is a fighter and a true hero, in every sense of the word. Marco Rubio is the kind of solid conservative who seems to understand what conservative values are all about (unlike Rick Santorum). Paul Ryan is THE guy to curb government spending and put the economy back on track. And yet...they won't run.

Instead, we get leftist empty suits like recent Iowa Caucus winner Mitt Romney, or Jon Huntsman.

Or radical idealogues with dangerous ideas about foreign policy like Ron Paul.

Or men who've spent the last two decades making themselves a stink in everyone's nostrils like Newt Gingrich (whether he deserves it or not isn't the issue of this post).

Or men who don't even seem to know what kind of campaign they're running, like Rick Perry (seriously, what was up with that "gay soldiers" ad?).

Or men who want to replace oppressive liberal big government with oppressive CONSERVATIVE big government (as if that's not an oxymoron) like Rick Santorum.

Where have all the good men gone?!

Why are good conservatives, who seemed to understand the importance of voting the bums out of Congress and the Senate in 2010 suddenly sitting back and letting men like those I described all but ensure that the bum currently sitting in the White House WON'T be voted out this coming November?

One of the only reasons I still kinda hope Newt pulls this one off is that he's a fighter, and we need fighters. Romney's an appeaser, not a fighter. Rick Perry doesn't even know what he is. Jon Huntsman is a liberal. Ron Paul is all about himself. Rick Santorum is a whiner who thinks he's a fighter.

The fighters who took back congress last year have decided this is one fight they won't get involved in. Why not? Is it because so many are recent electees? Who cares? Obama had yet to finish one term as a junior senator before he became President. Sure, we talked about his lack of experience, but it was his short term in office, COMBINED with his complete lack of accomplishments or record of any real meaning, little to no real world private sector experience and just the mysteriousness of why anyone, black or white, conservative or liberal, should vote for him, that we made issue of.

If Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio or Allen West (my top three picks) were to run, nobody would question their records. Oh, sure, they'd all be excoriated by the press the way all GOP candidates are, and almost certainly Rubio's "natural born" status would be questioned, but they could, and would, fight it. They'd turn it around on the press and come out looking like the winners they are. They are as close to a modern-day Reagan as we currently have.

And any of them would have won in a landslide. But they quit fighting.

Now we only have the one fighter, and he's losing. So, 2012 will either give us four more years of President Worst Ever, or introduce President Not-Obama. Because of the men left in the race, nobody wants to vote FOR THEM, they only want to vote AGAINST OBAMA.

Not good enough. I weep for the nation.