Tag: Moderates

This auther speaks about Moderates mis-identifying themselves as Conservatives.

Are New Jersey’s “Governor Zeppelin’s” Presidential Aspirations Going Down in Flames? Oh, The Humanity!

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

Chris Christie CartoonNew Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the Keynote Speaker of last year’s Republican Convention, finds himself at the center of some political chicanery, that just may shoot out of the sky any aspirations he may be floating to be the Republican Presidential Candidate in 2016.

The political shenanigans involve lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.  Gov. Christie spoke out on the matter yesterday, as the local CBS affiliate reported:

“What I’ve seen today for the first time is unacceptable. I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge. One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my Administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions,” the governor said in a statement.

As CBS 2’s Jessica Schneider reported, Christie had said previously that no one in his office or his campaign knew about the lane closures back in September.

But the email and text messages between Christie’s deputy chief of staff and the governor’s appointees to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey show a seemingly deliberate effort to create traffic gridlock by shutting Fort Lee’s access to the George Washington Bridge after its mayor refused to endorse Christie for re-election.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly wrote to David Wildstein, a top political appointee at the Port Authority, which runs the George Washington Bridge, one of the world’s busiest spans.

“Got it,” Wildstein reportedly replied before ordering the closures.

Kelly wrote the email on Aug. 13, about a month before two of three local access lanes to the bridge were diverted, causing hour-long backups in Fort Lee during the first week of school. The lane closures were not announced in advance.

“They are the children of Buono voters,” Kelly joked – referring to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono who was challenging Christie.

Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, said the now-public documents have confirmed his suspicions.

“I didn’t want to jump in to this arena because I’ve got enough to do in Fort Lee. But it’s now pretty clear that there’s intentionality involved,” he told WCBS 880′s Levon Putney.

State Democrats have long said the gridlock-inducing lane closures were political retaliation.

“I don’t know if this is comical or if it’s criminal. We went through absolute hell and misery here in Fort Lee for four days,” said Sokolich.

For those of you who have not been paying attention, Chris Christie, or “Goveror Zeppelin” as he was named by my friend, New Jersey native Gene Hoyas, has long been considered to be the Republican Establishment’s top choice to be their Presidential Candidate in 2016.

Never mind that he betrayed 2012 Republican Candidate Mitt Romney by having a bromance with President Barack Hussein Obama, as he visited New Jersey on a photo op, touring the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy.

The fact of the matter is that Reagan Conservatives, down here in America’s Heartland, “Flyover Country”, if you will, never trusted Gov.  Zeppelin to begin with.

Let’s face it: Christie is not a Conservative. He claims to be one…but he isn’t. He is, at best, a Political Moderate, or a “Squish”.

Kurt Schlichter, writing for Townhall.com in an article posted last November, nails the way Conservatives feel about the Vichy Republican’s potential 2016 Presidential Nominee:

We feel you’re in it for yourself and that if you get elected your administration will be a festival of squishiness that would make George W. Bush look like Ted Cruz.

Getting up to talk about Mitt Romney and talking about yourself? Classless. Getting in a micturition contest with conservative warrior Rand Paul? Lame. And don’t delude yourself that we are mad because you hugged the President on the eve of the election. Our beef was your evident glee, as if you were publicly repudiating our imagined “irrational hatred.” We had beefs with Mitt Romney, but we respected him as a decent man and we saw your act as a cheap backstab designed to promote yourself when he needed you most.

…We think that you think we’re stupid. Call it a feeling or a vibe, but we are used to a certain class of Republican acting as if conservatives are drooling morons. Inevitably, these same GOP geniuses are the ones who prattled on and on about the electability of McCain and Romney. Note that they’re also giddy about you.

Whenever the fawning mainstream media – let’s see how fawning it is once you start endangering Hillary – interviews you, you always have a long list of things we conservatives have done wrong. You never offer us much credit for the little things we’ve done right, like – oh, I dunno – winning back the House.

We suspect your attitude demonstrates a willingness to disregard our concerns. After all, who cares what a bunch of dummies thinks, right? Just keep in mind that if these “dummies” stay home, you get to spend 2017 running out the clock in the Garden State while being the Curley of the Three Stooges of GOP presidential failure.

You have a real problem. Right now, a lot of conservatives – I need to emphasize, a lot – are threatening to stay home if you get nominated. Go ask Presidents McCain and Romney how that works out on election night.

Of course, now that it appears that the big man is up to his suspenders in a political scandal, we Conservatives may not have to worry about staying home or holding our noise and voting for a Republican Squish, as we did in 2012.

Even if he escapes from this political crash virtually unscathed, it will damage Gov. Zeppelin’s political reputation enough to where he will be lucky to hold on to his current job.

And, that will be just fine. Americans have had enough of the Republican Presidential Candidates, chosen by the Republican Establishment.

2016 will be our Golden Opportunity.

In his 1975 speech to CPAC Ronald Reagan said that,

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people.

Talking straight to the American People will win the day. 

Squishiness will lose…again.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Effort to Redefine “Conservatism”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

reaganAs we enter the fourth month of Barack Hussein Obama’s (mm mmm mmmm) Second Term as President of the United States, I have noticed something that is both puzzling and troubling to me.

Actually, it is something that I noticed starting to gain steam as the Presidential Primaries started kicking into gear: a serious effort to redefine Conservatism to mean “wanting a government which doesn’t blow all my money and leaves me alone, so that I can do what I want do, regardless of how it effects others around me”.

On the internet, these believers express themselves in various terms, which all translate to the same thing: Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal.

Their common goal is a desire to redefine the definition of Conservatism in order to make them feel better about their non-Conservative, and oft times, downright hedonistic,  social ideology.

You’ll find these same individuals on Internet Chat Boards, complaining about how narrow-minded and statist Reagan Conservatives, like myself, are.

And, God help you if you tell them that there is such a thing as morality and ethics. They will tell you that you”re nothing but a busybody who wants to meddle in people’s private lives  and take away their “freedom”.

They insist that the only way for the Republicans to win anything at all in 2014 and 2016, is to forget the antiquated ideology of Reagan (Social) Conservatism.

You know, that whole God and Country Bit that I always talk about.

Evidently,to these folks, good, old-fashioned American Faith, Values, and Ethics are just that…old-fashioned.

That’s funny. Down here in Mississippi, that is how we live our lives. We love God. We love our country. We love our family and friends…and, we look out for one another.

Mississippi is not the only state like that. All the states in the Heartland of America, share the same Classic American Values and Beliefs

That’s why the President is still out campaigning. He can’t overcome them.

Look at how all of the National Issues which he and all of his ideological forces have been so feverishly trying to ram down our throats, homosexual marriage, amnesty for illegal immigrants, the legalization of marijuana, and gun confiscation, have stalled.

No matter how much Progressive Propaganda is unleashed upon the American Citizenry, Conservatives in America’s Heartland are standing firm, solid in their beliefs, still “bitterly clinging to their Bibles and guns”.

No matter how many rigged polls  and slanted news stories are thrown at us, we will not be moved.

Concerning those who believe that being a Conservative only hinges on your Fiscal Ideology…

J. Matt Barber wrote in the Washington Times that

Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds true conservatism. The legs are represented by a strong defense, strong free-market economic policies and strong social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

A Republican, for instance, who is conservative on social and national defense issues but liberal on fiscal issues is not a Reagan conservative. He is a quasi-conservative socialist.

A Republican who is conservative on fiscal and social issues, but liberal on national defense issues is not a Reagan conservative. He is a quasi-conservative dove.

By the same token, a Republican who is conservative on fiscal and national defense issues but liberal on social issues – such as abortion, so-called gay rights or the Second Amendment – is not a Reagan conservative. He is a socio-liberal libertarian.

Put another way: A Republican who is one part William F. Buckley Jr., one part Oliver North and one part Rachel Maddow is no true conservative. He is – well, I’m not exactly sure what he is, but it ain’t pretty.

At the Forth Annual Conservative Political Action Committee Convention in 1977, Ronald Reagan said,

The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations — found through the often bitter testing of pain, or sacrifice and sorrow.

One thing that must be made clear in post-Watergate is this: The American new conservative majority we represent is not based on abstract theorizing of the kind that turns off the American people, but on common sense, intelligence, reason, hard work, faith in God, and the guts to say: “Yes, there are things we do strongly believe in, that we are willing to live for, and yes, if necessary, to die for.” That is not “ideological purity.” It is simply what built this country and kept it great.

So, if your stated political ideology is one of those listed above, by not differing from them in your Social Ideology, and fighting against Reagan Conservatives, in your own Party, like me, which you have so derisively named “True Conservatives”, aren’t you being unwitting dupes for the Progressives?

Even the Progressives claim to be “Fiscally Responsible”.

Not to be rude, but, a one-legged stool is awfully hard to stand on.

Until He Comes,

KJ

CPAC 2013: The Start of the Second Reagan Revolution?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

reaganThanks to The Petulant President overplaying his hand in the first two months of his second term as the Leader of the Free World, America’s Political Pendulum, which began swinging to the right with the 2010 Mid-Term Elections, is now seemingly traveling at breakneck speed. And, it’s about cotton-pickin’ time!

The CPAC Convention provides us ample evidence of this. What is CPAC, you ask?

In 1973, a small group of conservative activists met in Washington to discuss the future of the conservative movement.

This meeting, convened by the American Conservative Union, resolved that an annual event was needed to rally conservatives, share strategies and promulgate and crystallize the best of the conservative thought in America. This meeting was thus the birth of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

In 1974, then-Governor Ronald Reagan was the featured speaker at the first CPAC Presidential Banquet. President Reagan’s 1974 speech set a strong, uncompromisingly pro-freedom agenda for the conservatives, building upon the foundation established by Senator Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign a decade earlier.

This speech and this CPAC were to become the catalysts for building a grassroots movement which has now, after 40 years, culminated in conservatism emerging as the dominant American political philosophy.

Taking place in Washington, D.C. each year, and now in regions across the country, CPAC educates, brings together and energizes thousands of attendees and all of the leading conservative organizations and speakers who impact conservative thought in the nation. From Presidents of the United States to college students, CPACs have become the place to find our nation’s current and future leaders and sets the conservative agenda each year.

Here are excerpts from the three best moments of yesterday:

Sen. Marco Rubio’s patriotism excited the crowd.

NBCNews.com reports that:

“We don’t need a new idea. The idea’s America, and it still works,” said Rubio, to major applause, anticipating that liberals would criticize his remarks for offering no new ideas.

…”Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot,” he said.

“The people who are actually close-minded in American politics are the people that love to preach about the certainty of science in regards to our climate, but ignore the absolute fact that science has proven that life begins at conception,” Rubio added.

Providing his prescription for the GOP as it searches for a winning path forward, Rubio said: “Our challenge is to create an agenda applying our principles — our principles, they still work — applying our time-tested principles to the challenges of today.”

Then Gov. Rick Perry showed ’em how it’s done in Texas.

Realclearpolitics.com reports

“The popular media narrative is that this country has shifted away from conservative ideals, as evidenced by the last two presidential elections. That’s what they think. That’s what say. That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates in 2008 and 2012,” Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) said in his address at CPAC this afternoon.

Perry also slammed President Obama for undocumented illegal immigration being released from detention centers due to sequestration cuts.

“This president’s posture, it’d be laughable if he hadn’t taken it one step too far, dangerously releasing criminals onto our streets to make a political point,” Perry told the crowd at CPAC. “When you have a federally-sponsored jailbreak, and don’t get confused, that’s exactly what that is — when you’ve had a federally-sponsored jailbreak, you’ve crossed the line from politics of spin to politics as a craven form of cynicism.”

And, Sen. Rand Paul Hit the Vichy Republicans right between the eyes.

Realclearpolitics.com reports

The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered. I don’t think we need to name any names, do we? Our party is encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom. The new GOP will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and the personal sphere. If we’re going to have a Republican party that can win, liberty needs to be the backbone of the GOP. We must have a message that is broad, our vision must be broad, and that vision must be based on freedom.

There are millions of Americans, young and old, native and immigrant, black, white and brown, who simply seek to live free, to practice a religion, free to choose where their kids go to school, free to choose their own health care, free to keep the fruits of their labor, free to live without government constantly being on their back. I will stand for them. I will stand for you. I will stand for our prosperity and our freedom, and I ask everyone who values liberty to stand with me. Thank you. God bless America.

The greatest American President in my lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan, spoke at CPAC in 1975. His speech was so “on point”, if you close your eyes, you can imagine him speaking at this year’s convention. Here are the highlights:

  • Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as the repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted but by those who stayed home. If there was anything like a mandate it will be found among almost two-thirds of the citizens who refused to participate.

  • Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have been preached “the gospel,” in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism which was, in truth, a call to collectivism.
  • I don’t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our party” – when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the difference between ourselves and our opponents.
  • It was a feeling that there was not a sufficient difference now between the parties that kept a majority of the voters away from the polls. When have we ever advocated a closed-door policy? Who has ever been barred from participating?
  • Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?
  • Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt.
  • Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of the people’s earnings government can take without their consent.
  • Let our banner proclaim a genuine tax reform that will begin by simplifying the income tax so that workers can compute their obligation without having to employ legal help.
  • Let us also call for an end to the nitpicking, the harassment and overregulation of business and industry which restricts expansion and our ability to compete in world markets.
  • Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine.
  • A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers.
  • I do not believe I have proposed anything that is contrary to what has been considered Republican principle. It is at the same time the very basis of conservatism. It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view.

  • And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.

For the Republicans to remain a viable party, they must return to their small government Conservative roots.

A Moderate Republican Candidate will not win the Presidency in 2016.  Dole, McCain, and Romney are living proof of it.

Americans are ready for a second Reagan Revolution.

We already have the set-up man: Carter on steroids.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Governor Chris Christie Wildly Popular…in New Jersey

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

chris christieNew Jersey’s larger-than-life Governor has a larger-than-life popularity rating in the Garden State.

It’s the highest job approval Governor Chris Christie has ever had. At 74 percent, it’s the highest of any New Jersey Governor in the 17 years that Quinnipiac has been polling the state, and the highest of any Governor in the seven states that Quinnipiac polls now.

Seventy-one percent say Governor Christie deserves re-election.

“Barbara Buono, the State Senator who is the probable Democratic opponent for him [in the 2014 gubernatorial race] — he beats her 62 percent to 25 percent,” says Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Christie also performs strongly among those surveyed in a hypothetical matchup for the White House in 2016.

“If the Democrat was Andrew Cuomo or Hillary Clinton, Clinton beats him 49 percent to 45 percent — within the margin of error — and Cuomo trails him 54 percent to 36 percent in New Jersey,” Carroll explains.

Carroll says Christie’s response to Hurricane Sandy helped to boost his popularity.

Perhaps in “Joisey”, Mr. Carroll, but Governor Zeppelin’s (as New Jersey Conservatives have named him) “bromance” with President Barack Hussein Obama did absolutely nothing to endear himself to Conservatives in the rest of the country.

On November 19, 2012, the New York Times reported on Americans’ Post-Romney-loss reaction to Christie’s “bromance”:

A few days after Hurricane Sandy shattered the shores of New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie picked up the phone to take on a different kind of recovery work: taming the Republican Party fury over his effusive embrace of President Obama.

On Nov. 3, Mr. Christie called Rupert Murdoch, the influential News Corporation chief and would-be kingmaker, who had warned in a biting post on Twitter that the governor might be responsible for Mr. Obama’s re-election.

Mr. Christie told Mr. Murdoch that amid the devastation, New Jersey needed friends, no matter their political party, according to people briefed on the discussion. But Mr. Murdoch was blunt: Mr. Christie risked looking like a spoiler unless he publicly affirmed his support for Mitt Romney, something the governor did the next day.

Mr. Christie has been explaining himself to Republicans ever since. His lavish praise for Mr. Obama’s response to the storm, delivered in the last days of the presidential race, represented the most dramatic development in the campaign’s final stretch. Right or wrong, conventional wisdom in the party holds that it influenced the outcome.

But behind the scenes, the intensity of the reaction from those in Mr. Christie’s party caught him by surprise, interviews show, requiring a rising Republican star to try to contain a tempest that left him feeling deeply misunderstood and wounded.

The governor, who had spent days delivering bear hugs and words of sympathy to shellshocked residents, resented the pressure to choose between the state he loves with fervent, Springsteen-fueled ferocity and his future as a leader in the Republican Party.

In New Jersey, Mr. Christie’s politics-be-damned approach to the storm seemed to represent a moment of high-minded crisis management for a governor frequently defined by his public diatribes and tantrums. Mr. Christie locked arms with Mr. Obama, flew with him on Marine One, talked with him daily and went out of his way to praise him publicly as “outstanding,” “incredibly supportive” and worthy of “great credit.”

But in the days after the storm, Mr. Christie and his advisers were startled to hear from out-of-state donors to Mr. Romney, who had little interest in the hurricane and viewed him solely as a campaign surrogate, demanding to know why he had stood so close to the president on a tarmac. One of them questioned why he had boarded Mr. Obama’s helicopter, according to people briefed on the conversations.

It did not help that Mr. Romney had not called Mr. Christie during those first few days, people close to the governor say.

The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.

“I will not apologize for doing my job,” he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort.

His willingness to work closely with the president has cast a shadow over Mr. Christie’s prospects as a national candidate, prompting a number of Republicans to wonder aloud whether he is a reliable party leader.

“It hurt him a lot,” said Douglas E. Gross, a longtime Republican operative in Iowa who has overseen several presidential campaigns in the state. “The presumption is that Republicans can’t count on him.”

Republican voters in Iowa, the first state to select presidential candidates, “don’t forget things like this,” Mr. Gross said.

With Mr. Romney’s loss still an open sore, Mr. Christie’s conduct remains a topic of widespread discussion in the party.

And, it remains a topic of discussion to this day.

Gov. Zeppelin, in his own way, has become a loathsome symbol of the Vichy Republican Establishment, who have sold all their Conservative Principles and any integrity that they may have once had, in an ill-fated attempt to appeal to the squishy middle of the American voting public, while ignoring the date who brought them to the dance, the Conservative Base.

Unfortunately for the Grand Old Geniuses, their fictional “Moderate Base” exists predominately up in the Northeast.

Average Americans living in the Heartland are still Conservative by nature, with actual morals and ethics, which aren’t situational.

You’ve heard the old saying,

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything?

Well, evidently Gov. Christie and the rest of the Republican Moderate Elite never have.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Epic Failure of the Republican “Establishment”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

Boehner2Last week, in a post titled,”The Failed GOP Strategy of Passive Resistance”, I observed,

Out here in the Heartland of America, I have heard from Conservatives who are bumfuzzled by the actions (specifically, the lack thereof) of the Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, in regards to the full throttle offensive battle being waged against America by its own president, Barack Hussein Obama.

I believe that the GOP Establishment have ordered the rank and file to shuddup and practice “Passive Resistance” in an effort to show the party as being “bi-partisan” and able to “reach across the aisle”.

The reason for their inaction has to do with the fact that the Republican Establishment are all Moderates. And, as the great Margaret Thatcher once said,

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.

And, evidently the Northeast Republicans’ Club, soooper geniuses that they are, love the abuse.

On Novmber 8, 2012, Jeffrey Lord wrote the following in an article for The American Spectator:

And so, another moderate fails.

Governor Romney is a good person, a great business leader.

But, alas, he is also a moderate Republican.

As were Herbert Hoover, Alf Landon, Wendell Willkie, Thomas E. Dewey, Gerald R. Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole and John McCain. Making Mitt Romney a historical asterisk as the tenth moderate GOP nominee (Dewey was nominated twice) to lose the White House.

The exceptions to the rule are Dwight Eisenhower, who won not because he was a moderate but because he was the general-hero of World War II. Richard Nixon campaigned as the moderate he was in 1960 and lost. By 1968 he had won the nomination of a party that had shifted back to its conservative roots and he campaigned accordingly — as he did in 1972. He won narrowly the second time, by a landslide the third. George H.W. Bush ran as the heir to Reagan in 1988 and won. Governing as a moderate he lost — and lost badly in his 1992 re-election effort. George W. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” — which is to say a moderate — in 2000 and 2004 and squeaked by the first time thanks to the Supreme Court, winning the second time by a bare 100,000 votes in Ohio.

On Tuesday night, it comes clear, as this is written using the latest Fox News figures, Mitt Romney lost to President Obama by 2,819,339 votes.

And the news ekes out that Moderate Nominee Number 10 Romney received some 3 million Republican votes less than Moderate Nominee Number 9 — John McCain in 2008.

Which is to say, 3 million base GOP voters simply refused to vote for Romney. Doing the available math, that means had those 3 million Republicans voted for Romney he would have, as this is written, a margin of victory in the national popular vote of 180,661. Depending on the state spread, potentially an Electoral College victory as well.

Does the message get through here?

Well, for some in the GOP — no.

The usual call will now go up — just as it did in 1950 from two-time loser Dewey — that to nominate a conservative is to lose. Somehow heedless that it wasn’t Ronald Reagan and his conservatism that lost or almost lost the White House, it was this seemingly endless stream of very nice moderate Republicans.

Reasonable people can be expected to raise the point of just when that old joke attributed to Einstein will come clear. You know the one. That the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. For Republicans, this translates as yet again nominating a moderate who is said to “move to the center,” “can attract women,” “get the youth vote” and “get the minority vote.”

The strategy has failed repeatedly for some 80 years. Say again… 80 years!!!!! And yet there are still those out there who insist on doing the same thing  over — and over and over and over — again.

As we head into the Lightbringer’s second term, it appears that the Republican Establishment would rather find a scapegoat for their collective misery, that learn anything in their defeat.

On his radio program on January 13th, Rush Limbaugh said:

I think the Republican establishment is of the same frame of mind as Obama is, that the opposition is conservatives. The opposition is conservatism. And that’s why we’ve had some people ask me, “What was Colin Powell doing?” Colin Powell was on Meet the Press yesterday doing what Scarborough did on MSNBC this morning, which is what a lot of Republicans are doing, and that is criticizing conservatives. Every problem we’ve got, from the gridlock to intransigence to spending, it’s all the fault of conservatives.

Mark Levin nailed the problem with the GOP last Monday on Sean Hannity’s radio program, as therightscoop.com reported:

The Republican establishment is destroying the Republican Party. The only reason they’re in the majority in the House is because of conservatives, conservatives across the country, the grassroots.

They lost the Senate. They like to point to 2 races, one in Missouri and one in Indiana. I can point to 10 races where there were liberal to moderate Republicans who lost and of course they never mention that.

The fact of the matter is that in my opinion…until the Republican leadership that has brought us McCain and Romney, that has a feckless RNC, a preposterously incompetent get-out-the-vote operation, is removed and replaced with fresh, smart, confident, knowledgeable people, until some of our backbenchers move to the front, some of the young, tea party conservative candidates who can articulate our vision and our principles, this is going to continue.

Obama may want to destroy the Republican Party, but the Republican Party is imploding. And you know what? It needs to be cleansed, it needs to be cleaned out – not for purity reasons, not for absolutism, but because it needs to be a party that stands for something.

I agree with “The Great One”. Until the good ol’ boys, or the Northeast Republicans’ Club, as I like to call them, realize that the majority of Americans out here in the Heartland are still Conservative “bitter clingers” who love God and country, they will be victims of their own hubris, and continue to lose elections.

And, it will be nobody’s fault but their own.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Fiscal Cliff: Acquiescense

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

obamakingIt looks like the Republicans Establishment has given the shaft to Conservatives…again. Last night, they accepted a deal to avoid the Fiscal Cliff, by signing off on legislation that adds $41 of taxes for ever $1 of Spending Cuts.

FoxNews.com has the story:

Congress gave its final approval Tuesday to a bill halting massive tax hikes and delaying a risky round of spending cuts, sending the package to the president’s desk and likely averting for now an economy-stalling fiscal crisis. President Obama said he would sign it.

The 257-167 vote in the House came after a day of high drama on Capitol Hill, during which conservative House lawmakers voiced serious concern about the Senate bill’s lack of spending cuts. Rank-and-file Republicans initially predicted they would tinker with the package, raising the possibility the Senate would abandon it and nothing would get done before the new congressional class is seated Thursday.

But House leaders soon learned they did not have a majority behind any spending-cut plan, and allowed the straight vote. Far more Democrats supported the final bill than Republicans.

The result, once Obama signs it, is that tax hikes that technically kicked in Jan. 1 for most Americans would largely be halted.

Obama, speaking at the White House shortly before midnight, thanked Vice President Biden for his role in negotiating with the Senate a day earlier on the compromise package. The president, as did Republicans on the Hill, cautioned that the bill will precede a broader debate in 2013 about deficit reduction.

“This law is just one step in the broader effort to strengthen our economy and broaden opportunity for everybody”, he said.

House Speaker John Boehner said shortly after the vote that Congress must now turn its attention to spending.

“The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the `balanced’ approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt.”

The bill passed by Congress would nix the 2013 tax increases for families making under $450,000, while letting rates rise for those making above that threshold. It would also extend unemployment insurance for another year, while patching up a host of other expiring provisions and delaying automatic spending cuts for two months. Those cuts, which would hit defense heavily, will instead be offset with a blend of tax increases and other spending cuts.

Americans will still see a 2-point increase this month in their Social Security tax, as Congress did not opt to extend that payroll tax holiday.

Political Pundit Dr. Charles Krauthammer believes that the Democrats mopped the floor with the Republicans.

“Look, there are a lot of conservatives in the Republican caucus in the House who hate the bill for good reason. This is a complete surrender on everything,” he said about the ratio of tax hike to spending cuts.

On Fox’s “Special Report,” Krauthammer offered his prediction on how House Republican leadership will proceed.

”I think what is likely to happen is that the leadership is going to look to get the 218 that it could secure to send the bill back to the Senate with equal number of spending cuts,” he said. “If they don’t get it, (House Speaker John) Boehner will have an open vote, unwhipped, Republicans will vote as they wish. They will probably be enough with all the Democrats to pass this.”

Moderate Republican Pundit Bill Kristol thinks that Congressional Republicans should just take what they’re given and move on.

…Working Americans making less than $400,000 will be shocked when they find that, contrary to promises from both parties, their taxes are in fact going up (the payroll tax). And we will face another cliff when we hit the debt ceiling and the sequester again in two months.

The deal is a sad commentary on our politics today.

On the other hand, the deal is substantively better than going over the cliff and having all income and investment taxes go up, and having the defense sequester hit right away. And politically, Republicans are escaping with a better outcome than they might have expected, and President Obama has gotten relatively little at his moment of greatest strength. In particular, this should do it for new tax revenues, at a number lower than Speaker Boehner originally offered—and it should be pretty easy to have the next debate focus on spending and entitlements.

So, enough House Republicans should vote yes to get the bill passed. And then immediately move on. For Republicans and conservatives need to get serious about what, substantively, they want to stand for over the next few years; about what, practically, they think they can accomplish during Obama’s second term; and about what, politically, their strategy and tactics are for dealing with President Obama and for laying the groundwork for victories in 2014 and 2016. This is the task for the new year, once we get past this dog’s breakfast on New Year’s Day.

And, in the meantime, Skippy, your fellow Moderate Republicans are punishing the small business owners who actually create obs and employ Americans. How in the cotton-pickin’ world, do you Vichy Republicans think that “reaching across the aisle” and going along with this “Tax and Spend Some More” piece of garbage stopgap measure will accomplish anything, except embolden an ego-maniacal president to further tax America into a full-blown Depression?

I’m glad you guys weren’t at Bastogne during World War II. You would have surrendered.

As a member of the ignored Conservative Base, you know what I have to say about your spines of Jello and your acquiescence to the Democrats?

NUTS!

Until He Comes,

KJ

The GOP and Social Conservatives: A Party Divided

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

Now that the Presidential Election is over with, and the GOP Establishment’s hand-picked Candidate, the man who could not lose, Mitt Romney, lost, guess what segment of the Republican Party is being blamed for the loss?

You guessed it…Social Conservatives, i.e., Christians.

Back in February, when Republican Candidate Rick Santorum was being blasted for his Christian views, Rush Limbaugh said the following…

The Republican establishment, for the most part, if they could, would simply excommunicate every social conservative Republican they could find. They’d kick ’em out of the party, and they would gag ’em. They’d find a way to make sure they couldn’t speak. That’s how much they hate ’em, detest ’em, are embarrassed by them. And it’s based on one thing, primarily. It’s based on the fact that these establishment Republicans and others who don’t like the social conservatives are primarily, singularly worried about what people are going to think of them for being in the same party with the social conservatives. It really is no more complicated than that. I mean there are other things. They think social conservatives lose elections. They think social conservatives make the whole Republican Party a big target, like what’s going on now, this contraception business.

Paul Jesep, an attorney, policy analyst, and author of Lost Sense of Self & the Ethics Crisis: Learn to Live and Work Ethically, wrote the following in an article posted on allvoices.com

It’s been said Rockefeller Republicanism is almost dead, if not dead. Only a few GOP moderates are in Congress and seem to be only tolerated by social conservative colleagues. Yet it is equally true Goldwater conservatism has been pushed aside for an evangelical fundamentalism attempting to use government and a political party to legislate God, religion, and morality. This is a far cry from what had been Republicanism. Ironically, it’s what social conservatives purport to disdain the most – activism falsely packaged as limited government.

Today’s GOP social conservatives lament their liberty is threatened when someone else is empowered with personal rights with which they disagree and though they are not impacted. It’s an odd argument coming from a group who fears government, yet seeks to use it to define values and personal responsibility for others.

If Republicans truly want to engage in genuine soul-searching to rebuild their shattered party, then they should start with a history lesson. At one time they championed the separation of church and state to protect religion. In the past, respect and good stewardship of the land was considered conservative. And Republican, conservative, and moderate had nothing to do with God. Until this generation of Republicans learn their own history, reform of the GOP seems futile.

In other words, Mr. Jesep believes that the GOP has to become the Democratic Party II, in order to compete for the hearts and minds of Americans.

Eric Erickson wrote in an article on redstate.com on November 9th,

What’s really going on here is that the people who voted Republican, but who disagree with pro-lifers and defenders of marriage, have decided it must be those issues. They can’t see how what happened actually happened unless it happened because the issues on which they disagree with the base played a role.

This is a psychological avoidance of larger issues and does not stack up to the data.

Mitt Romney won about a quarter of the hispanic vote and a tenth of the black vote.

Those numbers may not sound like much, but in close elections they matter.

A sizable portion of those black and hispanic voters voted GOP despite disagreeing with the GOP on fiscal issues. But they are strongly social conservative and could not vote for the party of killing kids and gay marriage. So they voted GOP.

You throw out the social conservatives and you throw out those hispanic and black voters. Further, you make it harder to attract new hispanic voters who happen to be the most socially conservative voters in the country.

Next, you’ll also see a reduction of probably half the existing GOP base. You won’t make that up with Democrats who suddenly think that because their uterus is safe they can now vote Republican. Most of those people don’t like fiscal conservatism either — often though claiming that they do.

If you really need to think through this, consider MItt Romney. He is perhaps the shiftiest person to ever run for President of the United States. He shifted his position on virtually every position except Romneycare. Of all the politicians to ever run for office, he’d be the one most likely to come out and, after the Republican convention, decide he’d changed his mind. He’d be okay with abortion and okay with gay marriage.

Had he done that, he’d have even less votes.

So, the reality is, once you travel outside the Northeast corridor, home to all the Liberal and Moderate Political Pundits, there are actually living, breathing, thinking Conservative American Christians, who still call this sacred land our home.

By the way…

Did you know that more than 1.2 million meals have been served to victims of Hurricane Sandy by Southern Baptist Disaster Relief (SBDR) volunteers since the storm hit?

In all, over 1,200 SBDR volunteers from 34 states and Canada have responded to provide disaster relief following the superstorm that ravaged the East Coast, the North American Mission Board (NAMB) reports in a disaster relief update on its website. These volunteers have also reported that 56 people have made professions of faith in Jesus Christ as a result of the organization’s work.

I just threw that in, because I did not read anywhere about the Freedom From Religion Foundation doing any relief work with the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

But, that’s an analysis for another time…

If the GOP turns its back on Reagan (Social) Conservatives, they will not win another election…period. 

Conservative Ideology did not lose this presidential election.

Poor communication of it, did.

Until He comes, 

KJ

A Convention of Moderate Excitement

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Did the Romney Campaign attempt to be , shall we say, a wee bit cheeky, during a Rules Committee Meeting for upcoming Conventions, last Friday?

Businessinsider.com has the report:

The GOP convention doesn’t officially start until Monday, but trouble is already brewing between presumptive nominee Mitt Romney and Republicans who are concerned by his campaign making an aggressive power play to control the party.

The drama Friday centered around a contentious meeting of the powerful Rules Committee, where Romney’s campaign lieutenants, led by his legal counsel Ben Ginsberg, pushed through several changes that would give Romney broad authority over the Republican nominating process.

According to one source who was at the meeting, the saga ended with former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, the committee chair, hightailing it out of the building before committee members could submit dissenting minority opinions, or “minority reports.”

In an interview with Business Insider Friday night, Maine’s newly-elected state committeewoman Ashley Ryan, said that committee members opposed to Romney’s plan drafted two minority reports immediately after the meeting, stating their position against the changes. Republican Party rules stipulate that people have one hour to submit a minority report after a meeting of the Rules Committee, and that it must have the support of at least 25 percent of the committee.

“The rules say that you have an hour after the meeting, but within 15 minutes, we couldn’t find [Chairman Sununu] anywhere,” Ryan, a Ron Paul supporter and member of Maine’s delegation, said. “Finally, we asked an RNC official if they had seen former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu. He said, ‘John Sununu! Everyone’s looking for him! But he left the building.'”

The details around Sununu’s Friday dip are still foggy, and it’s unclear if he ended up receiving the minority reports after all. Convention officials have not yet responded to our email asking for comment.

Earlier on Friday, Ginsberg and other Romney loyalists tried to neuter the threat of a minority report by raising the threshold of support to 40 percent.

BuzzFeed’s Zeke Miller reports that the attempt was forcefully shot down as overreach, even by committee members who voted for Ginsberg’s other proposals, including one that would force states to select delegates based on the results of their primary or caucus, and one that would allow the Republican National Committee to change the rules established at the convention.

“It’s important to make the rules four years in advance, before we know who the favorites are,” Ryan said. “If the national party can just change the rules, what’s the point of having a Rules Committee at all?

Indeed. On top of that, even though we all know that America has to fire our Manchurian President, a lot of us are still not all that thrilled over the GOP Establishment’s choice, as foxnews.com explains:

No matter when the Republican National Convention officially starts, it still marks perhaps the best chance for party leaders to ratchet up what has until now been bridled enthusiasm for Mitt Romney — as he and President Obama compete for the last of the undecided voters in a very tight race.

The balloons and confetti are set to cascade inside the Tampa Times Forum when Romney accepts the nomination, as planned. And party leaders have assembled Romney’s most ardent and passionate supporters to make their case on stage about why Romney is the best choice in November to lead the country.

“This is a huge opportunity to capture the attention of the American public and keep them focused for several nights,” said Juleanna Glover, a Republican strategist and co-founder of the Washington-based Ashcroft Group.

The biggest threat to that undivided attention will almost certainly be Tropical Storm Isaac, which has already postponed the election start from Monday to Tuesday and is projected to make landfall later this week along the northern Gulf Coast states.

Glover suggested the challenge for the Romney team will be to refrain from trying to re-invent the candidate or going over the top, instead generating enthusiasm through trying to reinforce that Romney is a leader, a church-goer and a family man.

Their biggest challenge may well be in convincing Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and private-equity manager who through the entire election cycle has argued his mission is to fix the economy not win a popularity contest.

The mantra even wore off on some of the Republican Party’s most influential leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner, who in July said: “The American people probably aren’t going to fall in love with Mitt Romney.”

Boehner also said Romney, who founded the Bain Capital private equity firm, “was going to do a great job even if you don’t fall in love with him.” But the perception was already largely in place and has, at times, remained there.

Just last week, Romney vowed in The Wall Street Journal that he won’t be part of the celebrity-style culture often favored by politicians.

Voters, Romney suggested, are most interested in hiring a fix-it specialist for an ailing economy. And when he appeared before crowds at campaign stops, he doesn’t think, “What can I do here to portray myself in a way that would be appealing to the public?” Romney told the paper.

Romney’s favorability rating is now at 46 percent, according to an averaging of polls by the Real Clear Politics website. It was as low as 21 percent according to a CBS-New York Times poll in January and as high as 50 percent according to a CNN-Opinion Research poll this month.

If  Romney would act more like the fella appearing in front of his hometown crowd on Friday, cracking a joke about his birth certificate, and embrace Reagan Conservatives, instead of marginalizing us, that would certainly help his popularity numbers.

I’m just sayin’…

Evidently, Mitt Still Likes Mandates

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

On Tuesday, Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA issued an ad featuring a steelworker, blaming Mitt Romney for his loss of health insurance after Bain Capital closed down the plant he was working at.

Later, his wife suffered and passed away from cancer.

Yesterday, the Romney campaign put both feet in its collective mouth.

Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul told Fox News that the steelworker would have been fine, if that person had lived in Massachusetts. He would have been covered under the former governor’s health law.

Quoteth this genius:

If people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President [Barack] Obama’s economy.

So, who is this young lady, who just inadvertently showed American Conservatives exactly what Mitt Romney thinks of them?

Per p2012.org:

Press Secretary Andrea Saul

(announced March 3, 2011 as communications advisor to Free and Strong America PAC) Press Secretary for Carly Fiorina’s U.S. Senate race in California. Communications director for Gov. Charlie Crist during his recent U.S. Senate run but resigned in April 2010 upon his decision to switch party affiliation. Press secretary to U.S Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) during much of 2009. Director of media affairs for McCain-Palin, responsible for organizing all television, radio and surrogate activity. Director of media affairs at the Republican National Committee, 2007-08. Associate account executive at DCI Group, 2005-07. Graduate of Vanderbilt University, 2004.

An establishment approved Press Secretary for the GOP Establishment Candidate.

Back on 5/10/11, USA Today published an opinion piece by former Massachusetts Governor, and favorite of the GOP Elite, Mitt Romney, Entitled Romney: As first act, out with ObamaCare, it contained the following statement:

If I am elected president, I will issue on my first day in office an executive order paving the way for waivers from ObamaCare for all 50 states. Subsequently, I will call on Congress to fully repeal ObamaCare.

The needle on my Irony Meter, at the time I wrote that post, pegged so hard it snapped in two.

Back in 2006, Romney was singing a different tune as he signed a massive health-insurance overhaul into law as Governor of Massachusetts. “Romneycare” was packed with subsidies, exchanges, and mandates to extend coverage to the uninsured. Four years later, it became the model for the national nightmare known as Obamacare, the very National Healthcare Law that he now promises to eliminate.

During a New Hampshire Presidential Campaign Debate on Jan. 6, 2008, the following revealing moment transpired:

Debate moderator Charles Gibson of ABC News: “But Gov. Romney’s system has mandates in Massachusetts, although you backed away from mandates on a national basis.”

Romney: “No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.”

GOP contender Fred Thompson: “I beg your pardon? I didn’t know you were going to admit that. You like mandates.”

Romney: “Oh, absolutely. Let me tell you what kind of mandates I like, Fred, which is this. If it weren’t –“

Thompson: “The ones you come up with. Bingo”

Later, during an April 19, 2010 interview with Newsweek’s Andrew Romano, Governor Romney added the following:

I’d like to clear something up about that federalist argument. During one of the 2008 debates, Charles Gibson said, “You seem to have backed away from mandates on a national basis.” And your response was, “No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.” Were you saying that you supported federal mandates then, even though you say you don’t now?

No. We created an incentive for people to get insurance at the state level. Our plan is a state plan. I oppose a federal plan for purposes of federalism. It would be like saying, a father has spanked his son. Do you think that the federal government should be allowed to spank children?

So people are misinterpreting that quote?

I do not favor the federal mandates that are part of Obamacare.

Back in February 2007, you said you hoped the Massachusetts plan would “become a model for the nation.” Would you agree that it has?

I don’t … You’re going to have to get that quote. That’s not exactly accurate, I don’t believe.

I can tell you exactly what it says: “I’m proud of what we’ve done. If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation.”

It is a model for the states to be able to learn from. During the campaign, I was asked if I was proposing that what I did in Massachusetts I would do for the nation. And the answer was absolutely not. Our plan is a state plan. It is a model for other states—if you will, the nation—it is a model for them to look at what we’ve accomplished and to better it or to create their own plans.

There are obvious similarities between Obamacare and what you did in Massachusetts. Do you acknowledge that what you did in Massachusetts has become a model for nation under Obama, whether you wanted it to or not?

I can’t speak for what the president has done. I don’t know what he looks at. He never gave me a call. Neither he nor any of his colleagues [gave me] a call to ask what worked and did not work, and how would they improve upon it and so forth. If what was done at the state level, they applied at the federal level, they made a mistake. It was not designed for the nation.

Well, Governor, evidently your Press Secretary doesn’t think so.

As a Vice-President of Marketing, I can tell you, a Marketing/PR Professional, like a Press Secretary’s, job is to communicate the information they have been given by their boss.

Perhaps “what we have heah is failure to communicate”.

Perhaps not.

Good luck, Mitt. (And God help us.) Pandora just opened the box.

American Conservatives/Chick-Fil-A…GOP Elite/Bread and Circuses

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics4 Comments

While Conservatives and “Independents” have been out fighting the good fight against Fascist Liberals by standing or sitting in their car, in massive lines at their local Chick-Fil-A, they have all been wondering:

Where’s the Republican Establishment?

Like the Main Stream Media, they’ve been ignoring the situation.

There is some good news ,though:

It appears that the apparent Republican Nominee for President has taken a stand after all.

On the Chick-Fil-A situation, KJ? Nope.

In his own defense.

FoxNews.com has the story:

Mitt Romney lashed back at Harry Reid on Thursday in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, saying the Senate majority leader needs to “put up or shut up” after airing allegations about Romney’s taxes.

Reid, a Nevada Democrat, first raised eyebrows Tuesday by saying in a news interview that someone had told him Romney went 10 years without paying taxes. He would only identify his source as an investor in Romney’s former venture capital firm, Bain Capital, and he acknowledged, “I’m not certain” it’s true.

That didn’t stop Reid from taking to the Senate floor Thursday to accuse the Republican presidential candidate again of paying no taxes, part of a broader Democratic attack on Romney for declining to release more than two years of tax documents.

“The word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years,” Reid said. “Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”

But Romney forcefully denied Reid’s allegations on Hannity’s radio show Thursday.

“Harry’s going to have to describe who it is he spoke with, because, of course, that is totally and completely wrong,” Romney said. “It’s untrue, dishonest and inaccurate. It’s wrong.

“So, I’m looking forward to have Harry reveal his sources, and we will probably find out it’s the White House.”

Romney’s campaign earlier rejected the majority leader’s statement as “shameful.”

Reid also raised eyebrows for invoking Romney’s late father, himself a one-time presidential candidate.

“His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son,” Reid told the Huffington Post.

George Romney, a Michigan governor, released 12 years of tax returns during his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968. His son has released only his 2010 tax return and an estimate for 2011, years when he was preparing for his own presidential bid or already running.

Reid doubled down on the claim late Thursday, firing back at Romney in a written statement.

“People who make as much money as Mitt Romney have many tricks at their disposal to avoid paying taxes,” Reid said in a written statement. “When it comes to answering the legitimate questions the American people have about whether he avoided paying his fair share in taxes or why he opened a Swiss bank account, Romney has shut up. But as a presidential candidate, it’s his obligation to put up, and release several years’ worth of tax returns just like nominees of both parties have done for decades.

“It’s clear Romney is hiding something, and the American people deserve to know what it is.”

Reid’s comments come in the middle of a scathing critique of the former Massachusetts governor’s tax plan. The Tax Policy Center, which Romney has called “an objective third party” in the past, noted that his proposal would give benefits to high-income earners while giving a tax increase to middle-class Americans. Romney’s camp has disputed that analysis.

Meanwhile, another well-known Moderate seems to have found his…err…backbone also. 

Thehill.com reports:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) lashed out at President Obama during an interview Tuesday, saying the president has “never even had a real job, for God’s sake.”

Boehner was discussing the presidential election, and accusing President Obama’s campaign team of using “over-the-top” rhetoric to distract from his economic record.

“Sometimes I have to catch my breath and slow down because the rhetoric in this campaign is just so over-the-top,” Bohener said during an appearance on “Kilmeade and Friends.” “And that’s because the president’s policies have failed. Listen — 93 percent of Americans believe they’re a part of the middle class. That’s why you hear the president talk about the middle class every day, because he’s talking to 93 percent of the American people.”

Then the Ohio lawmaker lit into the president’s qualifications to discuss job creation.

“But the president has never created a job. He’s never even had a real job, for God’s sake,” Boehner said. “And I can tell you from my dealings with him, he has no idea how the real world, that we actually live in, works.”

In the same interview, Boehner blasted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for his suggestion on the Senate floor Thursday that Mitt Romney paid no federal income taxes for a decade.

“I don’t know how you go out there and make a statement like that without any facts,” Boehner said. “It’s one of the problems that occurs here in Washington, people run out there without any facts and just make noise. The American people are too smart for this, they’ll get to the bottom of this, it clearly is not a fact, and I would think that the Senate majority leader would be smart enough to know that.”

While Americans have been taking a stand this week against the tyranny of the Minority, what have the leaders of the Republican Party (which we will be dragging across the goal line) been giving us?

Bread and circuses.