Liberalism and the leftism that replaced it...

Liberalism and its Discontents

By John W. Howard
Last month's solemn 50th year remembrance of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its confluence with an event of eventual monumental insignificance provides a useful context in which to contemplate the current state of national politics. The one reminds us of a political impulse that was at one time predominant and the other places in stark relief the ideological project that replaced it.
We use labels as a handy mechanism for describing complex concepts. "Liberalism", as a political term, did not come into broad currency in the United States until the after the First World War. It described a proto-ideology that envisioned a muscular central government reimagined as an engine for social organization in contrast to the benign protector of liberty envisioned by the Founders. In ignoring the assumptions of the Founding, it was not particularly out of character for politics at the time. Other than pro forma invocations of the pantheon of Founding heroes, no one really made much reference to Founding principles in political discourse. They did not have to, of course, since the basic governmental paradigm remained largely intact even in light of the eclipse of state prerogative in the wake of the Civil War.
Though they sought to move on from first principles, they did so, they thought, as an accommodation to modernity, not as a rejection of the idea of America. They thought of liberalism as progress; as an improvement on basic concepts, as a part of an evolutionary continuum of ideas rooted in American tradition. They were, largely, patriotic. They believed in Founding ideals. Though many demonstrated a disquieting receptiveness to foreign ideas, they were, at root, still nationalists who believed in a greater America.
Liberalism became not so much a movement as an overwhelming theoretical assumption and its reach extended far from the politics with which it started, to all corners of society, from literature to music to education to social mores. By the 1950s, it was, quite simply, the predominant philosophical presupposition of American life. It was the more predominant for the absence of any organized countervailing ideological force.
When a component of the liberal zeitgeist, the very real undercurrent of seditious leftism, demonstrated too clear a sympathy to foreign authoritarian impulses -- a purer form of the fundamental leftist philosophical doctrine out which liberalism evolved -- mainstream American liberals wrote hardcore leftists out of the movement and adopted a vigorous anti-Communism. Many became ardent Cold Warriors. John Kennedy ran for president arguing that a missile gap made the nation vulnerable to Soviet adventurism. Far from running on the notion of diverting defense dollars to social programs, he argued for increases in military spending and a more vigorous foreign policy to contain Communist expansion.
President Kennedy did not say "Ich bin ein Berliner" to suggest appeasement but as a statement of solidarity between Americans and free Germans against Communist tyranny. He did not face down the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis because he believed Communism to be an alternate political lifestyle that should be understood instead of defeated. He did not go into Vietnam expecting to contain North Vietnam. He went there intending to defeat it. He had been shaped by the transformative experience of World War II and the self-confidence and triumphalism that informed American politics in its wake.
These, among many other Kennedy Administration initiatives, are why a revisionist cottage industry has lately emerged that suggests that Kennedy was actually a conservative. He wasn't, of course, but liberals of that tradition were not hard wired to leftist ideology. They still believed in the idea of American freedom and individualistic self-definition. They believed in the heroic. They celebrated individual initiative and accomplishment and their twins, self-discipline and responsibility. They continued to celebrate fundamental American values and to identify with traditional American heroes. They believed in an America worth fighting for.
As the predominant political philosophy, liberalism controlled all levers of government. Democrats held the presidency and 2/3 majorities in both houses of Congress throughout much of the 1960s and again in the 1970s.
The fact of overwhelming liberal political power is why '60s radicals reserved their greatest disdain for liberals, not conservatives. First, of course, after Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat in 1964, conservatism went into eclipse and presented no viable opposition to the radical project. Second, it was liberals who transacted a muscular foreign policy, undertook a foreign war and steadfastly opposed Communism and Soviet expansion.
But 1968 marked the decline and eventual disappearance of the liberalism that, until then, animated the Democratic Party and dominated American life. After the radical Chicago riots and the children's revolt represented by Eugene McCarthy's abortive presidential candidacy, intellectually exhausted Democratic Party liberals implemented party reforms that allowed its seizure by radical organizers. The devolution of party power from power brokers with a grounding in American traditionalism to street radicals and narrow interest groups warped more by grievance than a notion of a greater good rooted in Americanism, marked a fundamental intellectual shift and the eclipse of liberalism as an energetic force in American politics. The nomination of George McGovern for president in 1972 only confirmed what everyone knew by then: Liberalism had been replaced by unalloyed leftism as the predominant ideology of the Democratic Party. And there it has remained, except for a short detour toward the center during the Clinton years.
The difference between liberalism and the leftism that replaced it is that the latter is less moored to American notions of liberty and individualism than to an authoritarian European redistributionist tradition that celebrates the primacy of the collective over the rights of the individual. That is why it is so foreign to American sensibilities. It is foreign and it is unrooted in any strain of traditional Americanism. It rejects the assumption of individualist achievement embracing, rather, government as the instrument of a "justice" that contemplates taking from those who do to give to those who do not.
Its very terminology rejects the basic assumption of American freedom: the power of the individual to transform society and his consequent entitlement to the fruits of his labor. The term "redistribution" suggests that there has been some sort of initial overarching random societal distribution of wealth that improperly conferred prosperity on some and not others. Individuals do not earn - and therefore have the right to retain -- what they derive from their labor. It is given and can therefore be taken by a "just" society that "redistributes" it in accordance with the whim of a government dedicated not to the protection of its citizens but to the shaping of a society. That is why the term is so abhorrent, assuming, as it does, something that is fundamentally and transparently false.
The rise of conservatism required a label with which to identify its adversary. "Liberal" was chosen because it was a term citizens understood and had been freely adopted by those who stood in contrast to conservative intellectual aspirations. It also avoided inevitable vilificationand blithe dismissal as "McCarthyism". But it was not quite right. By the time Ronald Reagan managed to discredit the term and the philosophy that accompanied it, liberalism was largely exhausted and had been replaced by a more pernicious leftism. Today's "progressives", as they now describe themselves, are not the liberals of old, like John Kennedy, who wanted to implement programs he thought would improve the nation but were compatible with national principles. Modern progressivism is much more dangerous because it has as its project not improvement but destruction and rebuilding in its own ideal image. It does not want to improve on the American project but to replace it with a pernicious utopianism and they are not fastidious in how they do it. European leftists have never had moral constrains in their manner of political warfare.
Progressives reject the common assumptions that bound liberals and conservatives as Americans even in their rhetoric.They are unbounded by a traditional decency that used to inform American political discourse. They have no sense of a unified American project informed by American tradition. Theirs is the moral sense of the original Soviet project. Nothing is beneath them.
Which brings us to the incident of monumental insignificance that occurred during the remembrance of a liberal hero but which illustrated, as little else could, the difference between liberals and their bastard progeny, the new American progressive that is now the mainstream of the modern Democratic Party. I refer, of course, to intellectual pygmy Martin Bashir, a man of such limited moral gifts that he descended to revolting scatological references in an attack on Sarah Palin. Can one imagine John Kennedy or Walter Lippman or James Reston ever reduced to such vile babble? Never.
It was not so much that Bashir said it. Little is beneath him so little is expected. But that no one on the left could be roused to condemnation illustrates the impact of a corrosive leftism that has left its adherents desensitized to notions of common decency.
The incident will, of course, be shortly forgotten, and that is as it should be. But it is far past time to acknowledge that the proud liberalism of the past is no longer a vibrant force in American politics and that the progressivism that replaced it is truly anathema to the American project.

Can We Talk About Impeachment?


By J.T. Hatter


The United States of America was once a land of laws and not of men. Obama and the Democratic Party have changed all that, possibly forever. Millions of people, along with a few brave politicians, are now openly speaking of impeachment. Why? Because the Obama administration's wanton and destructive disregard for the laws of the land have become so egregious that it can no longer be tolerated.
A LAND OF LAWS NO MORE
The Attorneys General of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia have issued A Report on Obama Administration Violations of Law, which says in part,
While the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has received the most attention, it serves as a representation of a much larger picture that demonstrates the continued disdain for the Constitution and laws shown by the Obama Administration.
Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute wrote an article in 2011 titled "President Obama's Top 10 Constitutional Violations." Shapiro's list is serious business and includes the Obamacare individual mandate, Medicaid coercion, Dodd-Frank, the deep-water drilling ban, and health care waivers for labor unions and other regime political supporters.
Robert Knight's list of constitutional violations  includes the illegal war on Libya (a violation of the War Powers Act); violation of religious freedom by requiring faith-based institutions to provide insurance for abortifacients, sterilizations, and contraceptives; appointing agency czars without Senate approval; illegal recess appointments; refusing to enforce laws the administration doesn't like; refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations (notably Fast and Furious); violating equal protection and voting rights; and using federal agencies and boards to effect the administration's political agenda.
It's now the end of 2013 and the ever-growing list of Obama administration violation of laws and constitutional restrictions runs into the hundreds of cases. This no longer a matter of opinion: this president has behaved lawlessly -- and has encouraged lawless behavior in his administration since he first set foot into the Oval Office in January 2009.
WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?
On December 3, 2013, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled, "The President's Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws." BizPac Review has a good article and video collage of the hearing, and other examples of the Obama administration selectively enforcing, ignoring and violating federal and state laws.
During the hearing, Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) presented the testifying experts with electrifying questions, among which was this one to Simon Lazarus, senior counsel to the Constitutional Accountability Center,
"If you can dispense with immigration laws or marijuana laws or mandatory minimums, can you also dispense with election laws?"
Lazarus eventually answered "no," but Gowdy wasn't satisfied with that response. Lazarus, former Associate Director of President Jimmy Carter's White House Domestic Policy Staff, seemed reluctant to imply that Obama wasn't in compliance with the law. The vigorous exchange, as reported by cnsnews.com, continued,
"Why not? If he can suspend mandatory minimum and immigration laws, why not election laws?"
"Because we live in a government of laws, and the president is bound to obey them and apply them," Lazarus answered.
"Well he's not applying the ACA, and he's not applying immigration laws, and he's not applying marijuana laws, and he's not applying mandatory minimums. What's the difference with election laws?" Gowdy said.
"We have a disagreement as to whether in fact he is applying those laws. My view is that he is applying those laws," Lazarus replied.
Lazarus's defensive, dissembling response does not deter the issue -- and the implications of Gowdy's brilliant question are staggering and cannot be deflected.
The central issue is this: If the president can elect to ignore or enforce laws, rules and regulations as he chooses, or if he can simply revise the laws as he sees fit, then has he "faithfully executed" the laws, as required under Article Two of the Constitution? Some congressmen don't believe so and want to bring the president to trial on the matter.
The Christian Science Monitor cited George Washington University professor Johnathan Turley in his testimony before the House committee,
"The president is required to faithfully execute the laws. He's not required to enforce all laws equally or commit the same resources to them," he said. "But I believe the president has crossed the constitutional line."
President Obama hasn't merely crossed the line. He has ordered government agencies and departments, including the Justice Department, to do his political bidding with the specific aim of circumventing Congress. These actions have put the entire American experiment in jeopardy.
Professor Turley is a social liberal and outspoken champion of progressive causes. But he is also known as an ardent defender of the rule of law. He spoke of his fear of the executive office subverting the constitutional balance of power between the three branches of government, and the further imbalance created by the dangerous "fourth branch" of government, the bloated imperious bureaucracy,
"We have this rising fourth branch in a system that's tripartite," he said. "The center of gravity is shifting, and that makes it unstable. And within that system you have the rise of an uber-presidency."
Turley continued: "There could be no greater danger for individual liberty, and I really think that the framers would be horrified by that shift because everything they've dedicated themselves to was creating this orbital balance, and we've lost it."
At the conclusion of the hearing, Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte issued a summary statement, which includes the following selected remarks,
The President's far-reaching claims of executive power, if left unchecked, will vest the President with broad domestic policy authority that the Constitution does not grant him.
We must resist the President's deliberate pattern of circumventing the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision making.
We cannot allow the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution to be abandoned in favor of an undue concentration of power in the executive branch. As James Madison warned centuries ago in Federalist 47, "the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
A CONSTITUTIONAL REMEDY
Georgetown law professor Nicholas Rosenkranz, who spoke directly to the committee on a potential remedy to the toxic situation in the White House, was blunt in his assessment of the situation, "...As I said before, I think the ultimate check is elections but I don't think you should be hesitant to speak the word in this room," he told our congressmen. "A check on executive lawlessness is impeachment."
How much executive lawlessness should a nation of free people be expected to tolerate? Does it depend on which political party has a president in the White House? Are Obama's lawlessness and constitutional violations not excellent reasons to bring him to trial on these matters and seek his impeachment? Indeed, isn't Congress in violation of its duties and responsibilities if it does not vigorously seek impeachment?
Impeachment is not a complete remedy. The corrupt and partisan Senate would never vote to try or convict the president. But if the House -- on its own -- had the courage to hold a vote of no confidence, followed by issuing articles of impeachment, House prosecution of corrupt government officials, coupled with defunding of the administration's political agenda, then these measures would collectively check the administration's assault on our freedoms and liberties.
When I was growing up, my teachers, family, and friends always expressed a confident, even buoyant, optimism about the security of liberty, freedom, and prosperity in our great nation. Nobody would have believed our own government would one day work so hard and diligently to take all that away from us. This is the United States of America, they said, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
They said it couldn't happen here.
Abraham Lincoln said, "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
It's time to stop talking and do something. Impeaching Barack Hussein Obama is a good start.
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The House brings the accusation. The Senate convicts. No matter the outcome, it is the duty of the House to point out lawlessness and get it on the record. To do otherwise is to be complicit with lawlessness. Most republicans in congress are gutless cowards who care to do only what it takes to keep their job. Everything else is 2nd tier. They will only take a stand when there will be no fallout such as voting for cloture then voting against the bill. Those that vote like that are cowards in my book but unfortunately voters believe the misleading ads on tv rather than think for themselves and vote via soundbite vs cognitive ability.

In Big Government, We Distrust


What aversion to the Affordable Care Act says about America.

By Michael Barone

As the fifth year of the Obama presidency draws to a close, it may be time to examine the unspoken but powerful assumption behind the policies of the president and his party.
That is the assumption that in times of economic distress Americans are, more than usual, supportive of or amenable to big-government programs.
The assumption is widely shared, and not just by Democrats. And it has pretty well been disproven, insofar as any abstract proposition can be disproven, in the five years of the Obama presidency.
The Obama assumption has its origins in the 1930s, in the apparent political and economic success of New Deal programs, and it was propagated with great success by the New Deal historians in books that were bestsellers in the years after World War II.
It is possible to draw different lessons from the 1930s, as I did in my book Our Country: The Shaping of America from Roosevelt to Reagan. In this view, Franklin Roosevelt’s initial political success was due to the programs of the so-called First New Deal, which stopped the dizzying downward deflationary spiral in 1933 and 1934.
In contrast, the economic redistribution programs of the so-called Second New Deal produced labor unrest, a sharp recession, and a sluggish recovery, and New Deal Democrats lost their congressional majorities. Roosevelt was reelected in 1940 only because he was a seasoned leader in a world at war.
That’s not how the Obama Democrats read history, however. Once in office with massive majorities, they wasted no time in passing an $800 billion stimulus package.
They were confident that the stimulus would prove popular with voters. They must have been puzzled when it didn’t — and when the idea of bailing out underwater homeowners generated not demands for government aid, but the formation of the tea-party movement.
The Obama Democrats may have been puzzled as well when initial poll numbers showed majorities against Obamacare. In a time of economic distress, weren’t Americans interested in getting free stuff?
This assumption ignored the fact that most Americans were not displeased with their current health-insurance arrangements. And it overestimated the amount of sympathy that could be generated for the relatively few who couldn’t get insurance because of preexisting conditions or unanticipated accidents.
In retrospect, it’s also plain that the Obama Democrats underestimated the difficulty of creating a workable framework for governance of the health-care sector, which makes up one-sixth of the economy.
They had evidently read too much Arthur Schlesinger on the glories of the New Deal and too little Friedrich Hayek on the futility of central planning in a complex society.
So they forged ahead with their legislation even after the American people, through the unlikely medium of the voters of Massachusetts, said, “Please don’t pass this bill.” People would get to like it — and to know what was in it — after it was passed.
Looking back, it seems that most Americans instinctively shared Hayek’s skepticism more than they hankered for Schlesinger’s celebration of big government.
Some liberals seem to understand this. In a column for the New York Times, Thomas Edsall quotes Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman as saying that in times when a nation is  “undergoing a decline in the material realm,” it may be less than usually amenable to “greater generosity toward those who, through some combination of natural circumstance, market forces and sheer luck, have been left behind.”
History provides support for that. In the distressed 1930s, when FDR expanded American government, our Anglosphere cousins in Britain, Canada, and Australia voted for governments that opposed similar policies.
The Obamacare rollout that began nearly three months ago has proved more disastrous than all but a few critics of the legislation dared to predict. Polling shows increasing opposition to the legislation and to the credibility of Obama Democrats who, falsely, assured people they could keep their policies and their doctors if they liked them.
The apparent skepticism of most voters that government could competently administer the health-care sector seems to have been justified — and then some.
Gallup reports that 72 percent of Americans see big government, not big business or big labor, as the biggest threat to the nation’s future — the highest number since the question was first asked in 1965.
The Obama Democrats assumed Americans would embrace big government policies. They seem to have proved the opposite.

Story of the Year


Insurance companies are rapidly becoming mere extensions of the federal government.

 By Charles Krauthammer

The lie of the year, according to PolitiFact, is “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep it.” But the story of the year is a nation waking up to just how radical Obamacare is — which is why it required such outright deception to get it passed in the first place.
Obamacare was sold as simply a refinement of the current system, retaining competition among independent insurers but making things more efficient, fair, and generous. Free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke. Free mammograms and checkups for you and me. Free (or subsidized) insurance for some 30 million uninsured. And, mirabile dictu, not costing the government a dime.
In fact, Obamacare is a full-scale federal takeover. The keep-your-plan-if-you-like-your-plan ruse was a way of saying to the millions of Americans who had insurance and liked what they had: Don’t worry. You’ll be left unmolested. For you, everything goes on as before.
That was a fraud from the very beginning. The law was designed to throw people off their private plans and into government-run exchanges where they would be made to overpay — forced to purchase government-mandated services they don’t need — as a way to subsidize others. (That’s how you get to the ostensible free lunch.)
It wasn’t until the first cancellation notices went out in late 2013 that the deception began to be understood. And felt. Six million Americans with private insurance have just lost it. And that’s just the beginning. By the Department of Health and Human Services’ own estimates, about 75 million Americans with employer-provided insurance will see their plans canceled. And millions of middle-class workers who will migrate to the exchanges and don’t qualify for government subsidies will see their premiums, deductibles, and co-pays go up.
It gets worse. The dislocation extends to losing one’s doctor and drug coverage, as insurance companies narrow availability to compensate for the huge costs imposed on them by the extended coverage and “free” services the new law mandates.
But it’s not just individuals seeing their medical care turned upside down. The insurance providers, the backbone of the system, are being utterly transformed. They are rapidly becoming mere extensions of the federal government.
Look what happened just last week. Health and Human Services unilaterally and without warning changed coverage deadlines and guidelines. It asked insurers to start covering people on January 1 even if they signed up as late as the day before and even if they hadn’t paid their premiums. And HHS is “strongly encouraging” them to pay during the transition for doctor visits and medicines not covered in their current plans (if covered in the patient’s previous — canceled — plan).
On what authority does a Cabinet secretary tell private companies to pay for services not in their plans and cover people not on their rolls? Does anyone even ask? The bill itself is simply taken as a kind of blanket authorization for HHS to run, regulate, and control the whole insurance system.
Three years ago I predicted that Obamacare would turn insurers into the lapdog equivalent of utility companies. I undershot. They are being treated as wholly owned subsidiaries. Take the phrase “strongly encouraging.” Sweet persuasion? In reality, these are offers insurers can’t refuse. Disappoint your federal master and he has the power to kick you off the federal exchanges, where the health-insurance business of the future is supposed to be conducted.
Moreover, if adverse selection drives insurers into a financial death spiral — too few healthy young people to offset more costly, sicker, older folks — their only recourse will be a government bailout. Do they really want to get on the wrong side of the White House, their only lifeline when facing insolvency?
I don’t care a whit for the insurance companies. They deserve what they get. They collaborated with the White House in concocting this scheme and are now being swallowed by it. But I do care about the citizenry and its access to a functioning, flourishing, choice-driven medical system.
Obamacare posed as a free-market alternative to a British-style single-payer system. Then, during congressional debate, the White House ostentatiously rejected the so-called “public option.” But that’s irrelevant. The whole damn thing is the public option. The federal government now runs the insurance market, dictating deadlines, procedures, rates, risk assessments, and coverage requirements. It’s gotten so cocky it’s now telling insurers to cover the claims that, by law, they are not required to.
Welcome 2014, our first taste of nationalized health care.

Who the Democrats Really Are


By Karin McQuillan
Obama is running from Obamacare to his zone of strength and core value: class warfare. 

Democrats are geniuses at playing on group identity.  When I ask friends what principles lead them to vote Democrat, it is a hard question for them.  After a baffled pause, I often hear this:  "Republicans are the party of the rich."  It is said as if that is all that needs to be said: not like me, exploiting people, bad for the country.  Not my party.  

As the liberal Howard Dean says, many Republicans "have never made an honest living in their lives." 

Democrats have crushed Republicans for years by defining lower taxes as catering to the rich.  Let your opponent define you, and you are finished.  In one blow they demonize us as privileged, selfish and out of touch, and avoid debate on the key choice facing the country: the scope of government.  Do we want an all-encompassing bureaucratic Nanny state sucking dry a quarter of our economy?  Or do we want to shrink the government down to constitutional limits?  It takes lower taxes and a balanced budget to allow room for individual liberty and a vibrant economy.  Once we are labeled the Party of the Rich, our values and our agenda are off the table. 

It is one big fat lie.  Republicans are the party of the working and middle class.  We want lower taxes for everyone's prosperity and freedom.  The Tea Party makes this clear; the establishment does not.

We have the numbers.  There's no fudging here:  we know the numbers of rich people and how they vote.  We know the numbers of rich Democrat and Republican contributors and politicians.  

It is the Democrats who are the party of the rich.  They are also the party of the poor.  Republicans are the party of the middle.

In 2012, NPR asked the non-partisan Pew research the party affiliation of the richest 20% of Americans, (incomes over $100,000).  How many are Democrat or Republican?  Answer: the same percent

Education levels prove that Republicans are the party of America's middle and working class, while Democrats are the party of the extremes.  People who vote Democrat haven't graduated from high school or else tend to have post-graduate degrees. The majority of high school graduates, people with some college, and people with a college degree are Republican.  Education largely determines class in this country.  Argue with that one.

Mainstream media supports Democrat propaganda by defining rich as households that earn more than $75,000.  Seventy-five thousand for a two-income household is not rich.   

A look at the actual voting statistics broken down by party and income shows this:

Party of middle class families earning $30-74,999:  According to Pew, seventeen percent more vote Republican.

Party of the white working class, those with a high school degree or some college:  Twenty-two percent more vote Republican.

Party of the working poor: Republican.

When I show these statistics to staunch Obama supporters, they are stunned and simply deny them.  Democrats need to lie about the party of the rich to maintain their grip on power. 

It gets more interesting.  While families earning over $100,000 are fifty-fifty between the two parties, Democrat rich are not the same as Republican rich.  Their level of wealth is different, and how they earn it is different.  Where they live is different, and their community's values are different.

In 2008 Obama carried the majority of the richer rich, those making $200,000 or more per year.  These Democrat super-rich live on the two coasts, and have a different value system.  They are not religious.  They are not family oriented.  Maggie Gallagher in Human Events writes:

Liberals live in rich social enclaves with artistic, progressive values ... A 2009 Quinnipiac poll notes that socially liberal values rise with income - "support for same-sex marriage also rises with income, as those making less than $50,000 per year oppose it 54 to 39 percent, while voters making more than $100,000 per year support it 58 to 36 percent."  The very rich are disproportionately strong social liberals....

The very richest are Democrats:

...there seems to be a tipping point where the ultra-wealthy begin leaning Democratic. The most famous example would be the entertainment industry, where star-studded events have become a significant part of Democratic culture.  .... A review of the 20 richest Americans... found that 60 percent affiliate with the Democratic Party...Among the richest families, the Democratic advantage rises even higher, to 75 percent.

Peter Schweizer at National Review explained in 2006 that Democrat millionaires and billionaires earn their money differently than rich Republicans. 

... the answer may lie in the way much of this wealth was accumulated. Some of these individuals (Kerry, Dayton, Rockefeller, etc.) inherited their wealth ... they haven't spent time building a business or even holding down a demanding job in corporate America. Others, particularly in the high-tech sector and Hollywood, amassed their wealth quickly and faced fewer challenges in dealing with invasive government and regulations.

In Hollywood and high tech, there is a sudden jump into wealth.  It can seem unearned and unfair.  Taxes touch them less than the Republican two-income "rich" family making one hundred thousand.   Über-rich Democrats often see good fortune as a lottery:

The Silicon Valley 30-year-old worth $200 million on a stock IPO after six years in the business is likely to have a different view of wealth accumulation than the industrialist who amassed a similar fortune over the course of a lifetime.

Democrats pretend they get elected thanks to campaign money from the little guy.  Obama brought in a lot of $5 "donations" by raffling dinner with the President and a celebrity, or for those less political, a shopping spree.   In truth, it is the GOP that is largely funded by middle-class voters. The average contribution to the GOP is about $50.

Dramatic statistics show the biggest campaign contributors are Democrats. 

In 2006, 17 of the top 25 contributors to 527 advocacy groups are funding liberal/Democratic causes, including liberal billionaires George Soros, and Peter Lewis.
In 2000... According to the lefty Mother Jones magazine, 18 of the top 25 individual donors to political campaigns were Democrats
self-financing candidates who spent more than $4 million of their own money were Democrats (between 1990 and 2000 by a 2:1 margin, and from 2000 to 2004 by a 3:1 margin)


What about all those wicked big corporate donors, especially the oil and gas industry?  The numbers tell the story:

In 2004, according to the CRP, the oil and gas industry pumped $25 million into campaigns, 80 percent of it to the GOP. ... That same year lawyers gave $182 million (75 percent to Democrats) and Hollywood donated $32 million (70 percent to Democrats).

The support of the super-rich for Democrats predates Obama:

In 2002, those who gave a million dollars or more gave $36 million to the Democrats and only $3 million to Republicans, a 12:1 ratio.
Of the top 10 individual contributors to candidates that year, only one gave to Republicans

If the media would ever check Democrat talking points, the evidence that Democrats are the party of the rich is easy to find.

Democrats represent the wealthiest congressional districts.   In "blue" states with a majority of Democrats, the average income is $100,000.  In "red" states with a majority of Republicans, the average income is $30,000.  A small example that speaks loudly: Kerry won only one county in the state of Idaho, but it was the county that included the super-rich enclave of Sun Valley. And he carried only one county in Wyoming, the one which included the super-rich community of Jackson Hole.

We see the same pattern of the richest Americans being Democrats among our politicians.  Who are the richest members of Congress?  Democrats.  Of the 12 richest lawmakers, only 3 are Republicans.    Only one of the five U.S. senators worth more than $25 million is a Republican.

Every recent Democratic Party presidential candidates has been a millionaire.  John Kerry was worth 200 million to George Bush's 15 million.  How many voters knew that?  Romney's wealth was harped on as the major campaign issue.  Do voters see Obama as a millionaire Ivy League lawyer, whose grandmother was vice-president of a bank, whose mother pulled down a six figure compensation package and whose step-father worked for an oil company? 

The deeper you delve into who the rich Republicans are compared to who the rich Democrats are, tells you a lot about the values of the two parties.  It becomes clearer why Republicans stand for American middle class ideals of hard work and meaningful work.

Doctors supported the Republicans in 2012 by a margin of 19% points

Registered nurses vote Republican.

Married women vote Republican. 

Wall Street can go either way.  In 2008, President Obama raised more Wall Street cash than any other president in the last 20 years - about $16 million, almost twice as much as his Republican opponent.   In 2012, Wall St. swung Republican.

Small business owners -- the family businesses across America that earn money the hard way and create the most jobs, they vote Republican.

The employees of manufacturing and construction firms and energy firms vote Republican.

Farmers vote Republican. 

The military and engineers and national security experts are Republican.

Look at who votes Democrat.  Lawyers are the single biggest donor block for the Democratic Party.  The big numbers of Democrat working people are government bureaucrats, teachers, union members, and above all, government unions.  Of enormous influence are the Stalin-level Democrat monoliths in academia, entertainment and the media, whose hold on those fields is enforced by blacklisting conservatives.

Trust-fund politicians are Democrat.  Those who earned their own money are Republican.

There are four times more Democrat lawyers in Congress than Republicans.  There are five times more Republican than Democrat doctors in Congress. 

See a pattern here?  People who deal in the arts and entertainment and social science world of unproven ideas are Democrats.  The guys who sell sizzle (celebrities), the guys in strike-it-rich businesses (Wall St. and high tech and class-action lawyers), the guys who buy sizzle (the young) and those who want money from the government (bureaucrats, teachers, welfare recipients) - they're the Democrats.

People who work hard to create something in the real world, who are paid hard earned dollar by dollar, who pay attention to costs and customer service, who feel the heavy hand of government regulation, or married women responsible for a family - they vote Republican. 

The richest Americans divide their votes evenly between the two parties, depending on how they earned their wealth.  The Democrats are the party of the super-rich.  Republicans are the party of the great middle.

GOP Rep Stockman to challenge Senator Cornyn in primary


Rick Moran


This is a surprise given the lateness of the filing by Steve Stockman. Cornyn, who is considered insufficiently conservative by many on the right in Texas, was expected to breeze through to re-election.

Now, he's going to be in for a tough fight just to get the GOP nomination.

Politico:

Firebrand Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman on Monday mounted a surprise primary challenge to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), setting the stage for the latest potentially explosive battle between a tea party darling and an incumbent firmly backed by the GOP establishment.
Stockman, a far-right conservative who has called for the president's impeachment, filed for the seat minutes before the 6 p.m. local deadline, confirmed Spencer Yeldell, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Texas. Cornyn, whose $7 million cash-on-hand far outstrips Stockman's $32,000, is still the heavy favorite, but the latter's entry into the race could force the incumbent senator to tack farther right as he tries to win over a corner of the party that has recently been skeptical of him.
Stockman's move shocked Texas political observers: Cornyn had looked poised for an easy March 4 primary contest, where he was set to square off with several candidates with little name recognition. Just 20 minutes before the filing deadline, Texas GOP chair Steve Munisteri told POLITICO that he was "not expecting any recognizable names or people with substantial resources running aside from the senator."
But Stockman is a highly recognizable name in some circles, and he looks to be a game-changer. The 57-year-old made waves earlier this year when he returned to the House - where he previously served from 1995-1997 - with his calls to impeach President Barack Obama. And he's not been shy about his other deeply conservative, and sometimes controversial, views on issues ranging from gun rights to immigration. He has also likened Obama to Saddam Hussein and urged America to withdraw from the United Nations.
The Stockman-Cornyn match-up will be the latest in a series of contests that pits tea party-backed candidates against incumbents deemed insufficiently conservative by GOP purists. In Kentucky, for example, tea partiers have rallied around Matt Bevin, who is taking on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And in Mississippi, some conservatives are waging battle against incumbent GOP Sen. Thad Cochran.

Democrats are not well positioned to take advantage of the GOP civil war in Texas or Mississippi, so the issue will not be electability. Allah has an interesting thought on Stockman's challenge:

Bigger conservative names in Texas had already passed on challenging Cornyn despite tea-party perceptions that he's an incorrigible RINO. Steve Stockman looked at what grassroots righties did for Ted Cruz against the much better-funded David Dewhurst last year and figured ... why not? What does he have to lose?
Stockman represents a very safe district, so indeed, why not take a shot? If he loses, he goes back to the House with his prestige enhanced.If he wins, he will probably become the junior senator from the state.
The congressman will be a decided underdog in the race, but money will undoubtedly come pouring in from across the country which will make Stockman competitive. He's got a late start but by the time the primary rolls around on March 4, he should be able to give Cornyn all he can handle.


Obama Stars in The No-Name Law That Sank His Party


By Clarice Feldman
When the Pelosi-Reid-Obama troika triumphantly celebrated cramming through the ACA (Affordable Care Act) over majority sentiment, they crowed that this was the president's signature achievement and ACA soon took on the name of its creator, ObamaCare. Though not one of them, nor any of the Democrats in the Senate who voted it into law uni-partisanly had read it, they all assured us that we'd grow to really, really like it. Boy, were they wrong.
We've paid almost a billion dollars to a Canadian firm whose vice-president is a college buddy of Michelle Obama's from their black radical days at Princeton to create a webpage to enroll people mandated by this law to do so, Obama having turned down the U.S. firm IBM's offer to create it for free. It doesn't work. Moreover, the continuing problems with this webpage -- and law -- are so substantial and intractable that the White House propaganda machine has stopped referring to it as ObamaCare or even the Affordable Care Act. Everyone now knows that for most people, the plan loaded with mandated coverage to curry favors with privileged tranches of voters like college girls who want free contraceptives and abortion coverage and to permit anyone to sign up after they found out they need costly care, not before, is far more expensive than what they were previously paying for medical insurance. It's some kind of no-name thing. Either that or, to be an honest descriptor, we could call it the UCA (Unaffordable Care Act). Under any name it's dramatically swamping the president and his party's standing among voters.
Younger voters who passionately supported the president in both election shots are running away from UCA, a law which depends on them to foot a disproportionate share of the financial burden:
A new poll from Harvard University's Institute of Politics shows young people increasingly cooling to President Obama and his signature domestic achievement, Obamacare. Fifty-four percent of young people (ages 18 to 29) disapprove of the job Obama is doing. A total of 47 percent of young people, including 52 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24, say they would choose to recall Obama if they could.
Obamacare is undoubtedly a major force in this change among so-called Millennials (61 percent say they disapprove of his handling of health care). The poll found that 57 percent of young people disapprove of Obamacare, with just 38 percent approving of the law. The numbers were not significantly different when those polled were asked how they felt about the "Affordable Care Act" as opposed to "Obamacare." A plurality said the law would make their health care worse (44 percent for "Obamacare" and 40 percent for the "Affordable Care Act") while a majority (51 percent for "Obamacare" and 50 percent for the "Affordable Care Act") said they believed the amount they would pay for health care under the law would increase.
As Ron Fournier at National Journal points out, younger Millennials (those under the age of 25) are in particular turning against Obama.
And each day we learn of new, more difficult to resolve, problems with it.
For one thing, there's no way to pay for the mandated insurance by December 23 as the law requires purchasers to do.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: People are receiving cancellations. They know they lost their insurance. There is no way to talk around it.
The other thing that the Obama administration, the White House, is pushing is the success of the exchanges because they got 30,000 people supposedly enrolled. Let's assume it's enrolled. They aren't enrolled.
BRET BAIER: There's nobody that really paid their premium.
KRAUTHAMMER: Exactly. Shopping and semi-enrolled -- aspirationally enrolled, let's put it that way -- in two days. Well, if you do the math on that and you continue that enrollment up until the deadline of the 23rd of December, you come out with a number, which means that of the 5 million people who have lost insurance, 6% will have it restored. All the rest will not have it. And that's without adding a single person who never had insurance in the first place. It is a disaster with the numbers that the White House is touting.
Hit and Run describes the payment issue's evolution on Just One Minute:
"In addition to fixing the technical problems with healthcare.gov, the significant 'back-end' issues must also be resolved to ensure that coverage can begin on January 1, 2014. In particular, the ongoing problems with processing "834″ enrollment files need to be fixed." AHIP President, Karen Ignagni said (via WaPo), December 1.
"The back end sounds like some obscure curlicue in the process," Krauthammer said. "It's the cash register! It's the point at which you make the purchase. And if you don't have correct information or any information, you don't have a purchase. You don't have enrollment. You don't have a plan, you have a catastrophe."-- stuff Krauthammer said, December 3
Dun dun dun!
"Now, this is like having a really good product in the store and the cash registers don't work... so we are working overtime to get this fixed."-- stuff Obama said,
...wait for it...
November 6.
Requiring people to buy insurance when you don't have a cash register to take their money is typical of the law and website's conundrums and when you learn Obama apparently manages by telekinesis, you can understand why:
The Government Accountability Institute report found that since Obamacare was signed on March 23, 2010, Obama met with "various Cabinet secretaries a total of 277 times," but his presidential schedule did not "document a single one-on-one meeting" with Sebelius. There was, though, "one instance of Secretary Sebelius meeting jointly with the President and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner." Breitbart Big Govt 
Obama shut down the federal government rather than delay UCA's individual mandate provision though he keeps exempting new favored blocs and delaying various provisions. Instead he's cranked up the propaganda machine, particularly the stuff aimed at the young. The efforts have been ridiculous, a clear sign, I suppose of how little regard he has for the intellectual capacity of those who voted disproportionately for him (a point on which he and I are in rare agreement}.
By way of example, HHS named as a winner of their video propaganda outreach one entry which is titled "Forget About the Price Tag."
In a White House Youth Summit, Obama "called on young people to do whatever they can to promote his signature health care law -- including plying their customers with cheap booze. "If you are a bartender, have a happy hour," Obama said as the crowd laughed. "And also probably get health insurance because a lot of people don't have it." Obama also encouraged young people who are student body presidents or workers at nonprofit organizations to help people get enrolled. "If you've got a radio show, spread the word on air," Obama added. Obama called on young people's sense of patriotism to join...."
Increasingly, more substantive problems with UCA were making themselves known. Many top hospitals were refusing to participate. Many doctors were retiring rather than go along with this quality care killer. Indeed, it was reliably reported by Washington Examiner's Richard Pollack that seven out of ten California doctors were refusing to participate in that state's health exchange. Reminds me of Sam Goldwyn's observation that when people don't want to come to the theater nothing can stop them.
So far, the law applies to a relatively small number of people -- when it expands to cover employer mandates and more millions are thrown into the UCA pool, the disaster will snowball. As my friend DoT notes: "Once the employer mandate kicks in they'll be hunting Democrats with dogs in this country."
Noemie Emery explains why Obama's "inverse genius" is causing so much voter angst and disdain:
By threatening their lives as well as their budgets, Obama has created a huge class of losers, who statistically overrun the small class of winners and outweigh them in savvy, no doubt. "A significant minority of losers or self-perceived losers and a few high profile bad outcomes are more than enough to cause real political problems," as Kaiser Foundation head honcho Drew Altman informs us. They're not a minority, and they have, and they will.
As National Journal's James Oliphant tells us, the plan will insure about 25 million, about half of the number serviced by Medicare, at the expense of almost everyone else in the country, who stand to lose something -- in anxiety, money, or care. Those helped "represent just a relative handful of people, many of whom sit at the lower end of the political spectrum, and engage little with the political process ... that's what's going to make any sort of renewed national sales pitch so difficult. Among the politically active, the damage is done."
Math is so hard for Democrats.
So, if Obama wasn't managing his namesake signature legislation, apart from ribbon cuttings, offending our allies, giving away the store to our enemies, firing our military officers, and blowing through the national treasure, what has he been doing? He's been acting as the star of his own production, Obama, the President and starring in a series of preposterous publicity poses the White House photographers then release to show, for example, that the meaning of the deaths of famous people and the commemoration of historical figures are really significant only as they reveal his reactions to these events.
So while Obama paid no obvious attention to the provisions in the 2,000-plus pages law or the thousands of regulations HHS churned out along with the inoperability of a critically defective, grossly overpriced website, what was he doing?
Ace of Spades explains that Obama and his most ardent fans, including, of course, the New York Times and Chris Matthews, see the presidency as a drama in which the hero, not his MacGuffin [object of the quest], is all that matters.
It's the Hero that the rapt fan is interested in, not the MacGuffin.
The left is just interested in the character, the Hero... [Ed: he fisks the NYT's sappy account of Obama's Christmas book buying]
President Obama has never visited the rugged mountains of Chechnya, but if he digs into one of the novels he bought last weekend, "A Constellation of Vital Phenomena," he will be transported to a land of unremitting violence and tragedy, where the innocent are caught up in war as often as the guilty.
Perhaps Mr. Obama is seeking a deeper understanding of the roots of the ethnic bloodletting after Chechnya vaulted back to the front pages this year with the Boston Marathon bombings. Or perhaps he is thinking about his troubled relationship with Russia.
Either way, the novel would give the president a more visceral feel for one of the world's most brutal conflicts than the graphic intelligence papers that cross his desk.
"I imagine someone in his position gets a lot of facts and figures," Anthony Marra, the author of the book, mused the other day. "But the novel is really about the experience, about the psyche and the soul."
A reading list offers a rare window into the presidential mind, a peek at what a commander in chief may be thinking about beyond the prosaic and repetitive briefings that dominate his days.
Yes who cares about those repetitive boring briefings. I mean, there's nothing interesting going on, certainly, apart from the intense drama of his signature policy initiative going up in flames.
[snip]
I'm not sure if we can call a several-times-per-week [ed: of Obama's reference to "his journey"] occurrence rare.
In fact, I'm pretty sure it's the concern for Obama's actual record that's rare. The intense interest in Obama the Personality is the common thing.
The right has repeatedly belittled Obama as a "Celebrity." And indeed that is what he is. His fans are primarily interested in Barack the Man, Barack the Personality.
And not so much as Barack Obama, the executor of federal law.
[snip]
[The books he purchased] are volumes about identity and reinvention, about what it means to be American, and about family, love, betrayal and redemption.
Yup -- movie themes. Book themes. Story themes.
[snip]
The New York Times, like Chris Matthews, is not interested in policy. It is solely interested in the travails and triumphs of their Hero, Barack Obama.
Right now I, too, see Obama as star of his own movie, he's standing on the prow of the Titanic as it sinks beneath the waves.

California Republicans Speak Truth to Power


By Sally Zelikovsky
Well, well, well. It's always a glorious day in a socialist paradise when the lefties show their tyrannical hand and try to suppress speech. They want Americans to have accessibility to healthcare, but not to any information about the insurance they are forcing millions to purchase.
In order to arm Californians with accurate information about the California Healthcare Exchange, the California Republican Assembly launched a website this past August called CoveringHealthcareCA.com -- clearly setting forth what you have to do, the date by which you have to do it and the consequences if you don't. Unquestionably a resource for the public, the home page is titled "Helping You Navigate Federal Health Care Changes," there is link to the California Exchange, and a comprehensive FAQ section with answers to questions like why it is more expensive to buy health insurance, what happens if you don't purchase insurance, what if you are already covered, and whether your financial and medical information will be kept confidential, etc. There is a separate page on taxes, one specifically addressing seniors and one for youth. Basically, the site takes what's been shrouded in thousands of pages of legislation and regulations, and explains it to the general population.
Can you imagine anything more heinous?
Yes, "fake" websites that compete with the authentic CoveredCA.com and set out to defraud consumers with domain names that deceptively draw them in. Unsuspecting consumers end up mistakenly providing their social security numbers to identity thieves masquerading as government thieves, only to find out one day that they don't have medical insurance. Their lives will unravel into the nightmare Jason Bateman goofily experiences in Identity Thief. Only, it's not funny at all.
Fortunately, about ten real "fake" sites have been removed from the web by California's Attorney General, Kamala Harris, one of the few things she has done that we can applaud.
But the Republican site is not one of the fakes and therefore has not been removed. It provides clear, concise, truthful information and does not peddle false hopes. Nor does it attempt to enroll anyone for the purpose of defrauding them, posing as the real site. Unlike healthcare.gov, it reveals costs and liabilities before customers are forced to enter all of their personal information -- removing the veil of secrecy "the most transparent administration ever" has placed over the entire process.
But the ObamaZombies in the press and at MoveOn.org are in a panic now that there is a website that lays out the truth and consequences of enrolling in the California Exchange. To further block the facts from seeping out, MoveOn.org and their media pals are piggybacking off of the hullaballoo surrounding the shutdown of the fake sites -- miscasting the Republican site as another fake and petitioning to have the government remove it from the internet.
Here's a gander at some of the headlines supporting this effort:
ABC News: California Republicans Defend Fake Obamacare Site
HuffPo: Californiia Republicans Direct Constituents to Misleading Obamacare 'Resource Guide'
thinkprogress.org: The Fake ObamacareSite That is Trying to Trick Californians
Yahoo 'News': My personal favorite. Notice "resource," which it indisputably is, is in quotes but "fake," which it clearly is not, is not. California Republicans Send Voters to a Fake Obamacare 'Resource' Site
Business Insider: Republicans Trick Californians with Fake Healthcare Site
Daily Kos: California GOP Creates Fake Healthcare Website to Discourage Constituents from Obtaining Insurance
HuffPo quotes California Republican Assemblywoman Connie Conway, saying: "Hard-working Californians have serious questions about how the new federal health care mandate will affect them and they are looking to lawmakers for answers." Connie gets it. When lawmakers pass legislation that affects the average Joe, they are obligated to explain what the law requires of him. Average Joes don't have the time or inclination to read thousands of pages of droll Washingtonspeak. Add to that the fine print for California, which can be viewed here, and even the nerdiest law student's eyes glaze over.
But HuffPo's Molly Reilly is miffed that the sections for seniors and the youth provide "details on what the new law means for each group." Good Golly, Miss Molly. She's really upset that the people affected by the law might actually find out what the law is and its implications for them in the real world, not her utopian paradise where information is withheld. She is worried because "[t]hose details are often drawn from Republican talking points on the law's drawbacks." OMG.
For example: Seniors are counseled that "they may not see changes immediately to their benefits or coverage" but "[d]own the line... the erosion and accessibility of care may become a problem."
And "Young Adults" will "end up paying for much of federal health care reform by subsidizing the cost of sicker people, or by paying a tax penalty."
Not only are both statements objectively correct, but they are facts oft repeated by Democrats too numerous to list. But this cannot stand for today's utopian-wannabe's. When "Republican talking points" mirror "objective facts" the only way Miss Molly and her fellow travelers can continue to pull the wool over everyone's eyes, is to pull the site that bears the truth. Poof. China? Cuba? Venezuela, anyone?
The press and MoveOn aren't the only players who are horrified that the truth might get out. Rep. Janice Hahn (D-California) is "appalled by the so-called civil servants who have stooped to confusing and misleading Californians who are trying to get health insurance." Apparently, she missed the memo in Civics Class that civil servants are supposed to impart information to the public, especially about confusing and misleading laws they crafted that impact the citizenry. Their job isn't to snooker individuals into buying something they don't want that costs more and offers less than they had in the free market. But, when push comes to shove, if they have to withhold facts to make that happen, the ends justify the means.
If anything, the Republican site unmuddies the ACA's muddy waters for the millions of Californians who are confused by the swirl of lies coming from the president and the spin from all of the stakeholders, like this, from Rep. Hahn:
The unhelpful website seems to be little more than an attempt by Affordable Care Act opponents to undermine the law's success and prevent people who need health coverage from getting it. I urge all Californians looking for affordable health care to visit CoveredCA.com and be on the lookout for fake sites.
And there you have it. Republicans are using a fake site (which it isn't) to undermine the law's success (of which there isn't any) and preventing people from getting health coverage (which they can't access because of a derailed, Democrat-controlled website and, when they can log on, they refuse to enroll after discovering that ObamaCare isn't all it was cracked up to be).
Touché to the California Republican Assembly for going on offense and refusing to back down. Let them continue to speak truth to power and fight this socialist mob on behalf of the People.
MoveOn.org is homing in on the 25,000 signatures they need. Contact Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway and express your support for this effort and encourage California Republicans to remain steadfast in exposing the realities of ObamaCare and how it affects Californians. If you live outside of California, contact the Republican leaders in your state and urge them to launch similar websites.
Below is the wording for MoveOn's petition:
In a last ditch attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act -- a.k.a. Obamacare -- California Republicans have launched a fake website (CoveringHealthcareCA.com) designed to capture those interested in the state's real Obamacare site: CoveredCA.com.
California Republicans have promoted the fake site with tens of thousands of taxpayer-funded mailers to constituents. It sows fear and confusion by promoting misleading or outright false information and avoiding basic facts and benefits of the law. It's a politically motivated, unconscionable attempt to prevent sick people from getting the care they need. Disagreeing on a matter of public policy is one thing, but actively working to mislead voters and prevent them from accessing healthcare is unacceptable.