The folks at Red State are always soliciting new ideas for rebuilding the party and regaining control of our country. I propose the Sarah Palin RocknRoll Tour to Save the GOP featuring Sarah Palin, the Lt. Dan Band and other commit artists.

The tour would consist of a series of dates and venues through out the country of course and the money raised would go to fund campaigns to capture seats in the House and Senate. The message is simple: It’s cool to be conservative and here are the reasons why.

• Freedom to pursue opportunity and live the life that most people in other countries only dream of.
• Embrace the exceptional role of America and all it stands for now and through out history.
• Personal responsibility is the key to  success in family, career and personal growth.
• Conservatism means helping people who can’t help themselves instead of those who won’t help themselves.
• You are the master of your fate not government.
• Yes. Conservatives are allowed to dance.

And the list goes on…

Andrew Breitbart makes the case that conservatives shouldn’t cede the pop culture to the liberal Democrats of New York and Hollywood. I think he’s right. We need to stop being the party of old white guys in golf pants. Steven Crowder and his now famous YouTube videos are doing more to resurrect conservatism than Michael Steel and the RNC. Hello?

Let’s chisel away the layers of fossilized ideas and start to think outside the box.

It’s great to get our opinions out on RedState and share ideas. It would be even greater if we put those ideas to work. I suggest that RedState (or some other group with the resources) set up an Adopt a Congressman Program (this includes Senators). Yes I can hear the groans already, but let’s think about this for a moment. We don’t have to wait until 2010 to make something happen. We can start doing something today.

If you sign up for the Adopt a Congressman Program :

1. You would be assigned a Congressman (or 2) to look after. Yes they would be GOP Congressman with some rare exceptions. Assignments would be done by RedState or someone else to insure that adoptions are distributed evenly.
2. Follow that Congressman’s voting record. This is easy enough with the Internet.
3. You would send emails or snail mail to the Congressman on a regular basis providing feedback on pending bills or just encouragement when they get something right.
4. You would promise to support that Congressman’s campaign when they came up for re-election. This could mean donating money (even if it’s just a few bucks), making calls for the Congressman if possible or, if your in his or her district, actually volunteering.
5. If you have the means and the time you would occasionally post a brief report on the Congressman here at RedState on how he or she has been doing. Have they been responding to the voters? Have they introduced any legislation we should know about? Have they pulled any bone head moves?
6. In all this the bottom line is to get them to be accountable to the people and the country they represent.

I’m in Massachusetts so my Congressmen and Senators are the mooniest of the moonbats. It’s a lost cause here, but it may change some day. I would love to support other Congressmen in other states who are doing a good job, however, and so would most of you I think.

In unity there’s power. If our Congressmen realize there’s an “organization” out there made up of serious, conscientious voters watching them, encouraging them, supporting them and providing valuable grassroots feedback I think we can have some impact on the political process. It beets sitting around and complaining.

Just a suggestion…

We have to applaud the courage of this young man.

A student is suing Los Angeles City College over an incident in which a professor refused to let him finish a speech against gay marriage, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The professor allegedly called the student a “fascist bastard” for speaking out against gay marriage. The professor threatened to have the student expelled after he complained to authorities. The Alliance Defense Fund, a group formed to protect the free speech rights of Christians,  has come to the aide of the student.

I think the implications are clear. The Left has lost all objectivity especially in academia. They have become heavy handed, intolerant bullies. Whether it’s incidents like this or the Fairness Doctrine, basic First Amendment rights are in jeopardy.

The commenters at the LA News NBC affiliate web site seem just as outraged as Johnathan. Commenter Jake writes:

What, you don’t understand? Let me spell it out for you — hate speech will not be tolerated. Oh, by the way, I get to define hate. We will not tolerate repression unless it is repressing what we deem to be intolerant. Stand in our way and we will invade your church, publish your address on the web, threaten to kill you, tear your sign out of your hands, throw paint on you, pie, you, turn our backs on you as you speak. All in the name of tolerance and open mindedness. Orwell, you were WAY ahead of your time.

I think he nailed it.

The Financial Times has generally been positive and “hopeful” about our new leadership, but the performance of the Obama Administration has them deeply concerned. They think that the Obama team is a little too “hopeful” and not serious enough. In spite of their overall approval of Obama you can’t miss the subtext of the article.  It is the lack of focus and experience they have exhibited on the financial crisis that has FT wringing its hands.

Has Barack Obama’s presidency already failed? In normal times, this would be a ludicrous question. But these are not normal times. They are times of great danger. Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much. If he fails to act decisively, the president risks being overwhelmed, like his predecessor. The costs to the US and the world of another failed presidency do not bear contemplating.

The article points out the real issue here and the failure of TARP as it is being proposed. They offer some solid advice. “Yes you can”… learn from history, Mr. O.

The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once. It is an important, but secondary, question whether the right answer is to create new “good banks”, leaving old bad banks to perish, as my colleague, Willem Buiter, recommends, or new “bad banks”, leaving cleansed old banks to survive. I also am inclined to the former, because the culture of the old banks seems so toxic.

Let’s remember that Japan did not take our advice and the rest is history. In simple terms, let the bad banks (and other institutions like Fanie and Fredie) fail and cleanse the system of chronically toxic financial practices. The free market works because it rewards smart behavior and punishes bad.

Not to be overly pessimistic, but all I have seen from the Obama Administration is naive partisan ideology.  The lack of experience and the belief in their own infallible intellect should have us all jumping out of bed in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

Why then is the administration making what appears to be a blunder? It may be that it is hoping for the best.

[snip]

As much as they admire our new President, their financial instincts prevent them from giving Obama a total pass. They seem impatient with the hopiness of changiness and are desperately wanting Obama to put away the fluffy minded Utopinism and embrace reality.

Let’s hope things will change…

The AP did a quick fact check of Obama’s presser last night focusing on the the pork and  jobs. Obama has been less than forthright with the public and the press conference demonstrated that very clearly.

One of the bigger canards the Dems and Obama have been using to cause a stampede among the herd is that this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Mmmmmmm…nope.

OBAMA: “We also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression.”

THE FACTS: This could turn out to be the case. But as bad as the economic numbers are, the unemployment figures have not reached the levels of the early 1980s, let alone the 1930s — yet. A total of 598,000 payroll jobs vanished in January — the most in nearly 35 years — and the unemployment rate jumped to 7.6 from 7.2 percent the month before. The most recent high was 7.8 percent in June 1992.

And the jobless rate was 10.8 percent in November and December 1982. Unemployment in the Great Depression ranged for several years from 25 percent to close to 30 percent.

Obama and the Dems are masters of the Politics of Fear when they are trying to push their agenda. Let’s not forget the disastrous Carter years. We had a prime rate of over 20 percent, double digit inflation and gas rationing.  Nothing says “economic crisis” like sitting in line for two hours just to get $5 worth of gas. We’re not there yet, but if Obama and the Dems aren’t stopped there’s nothing to prevent this administration from becoming Jimmy Carter’s second term.

The other slippery claim is that there are no “earmarks” in the stimulus bill. Again this is a clever little semantic game that the President is engaging in and only the most thirsty Koolaide drinkers will be taken in by it.

OBAMA: “Not a single pet project,” he told the news conference. “Not a single earmark.”

THE FACTS: There are no “earmarks,” as they are usually defined, inserted by lawmakers in the bill. Still, some of the projects bear the prime characteristics of pork — tailored to benefit specific interests or to have thinly disguised links to local projects.

For example, the latest version contains $2 billion for a clean-coal power plant with specifications matching one in Mattoon, Ill., $10 million for urban canals, $2 billion for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrid cars, and $255 million for a polar icebreaker and other “priority procurements” by the Coast Guard.

Obama told his Elkhart audience that Indiana will benefit from work on “roads like U.S. 31 here in Indiana that Hoosiers count on.” He added, “And I know that a new overpass downtown would make a big difference for businesses and families right here in Elkhart.”

U.S. 31 is a north-south highway serving South Bend, 15 miles from Elkhart in the northern part of the state.

This is an insult to the intelligence of the average voter. As I have observed before, Mr. Obama thinks you’re stupid. “Spending bill? Stimulus bill? What’s the difference? Now go out and inflate your tires already and let me eat my waffles!!”

Let’s hope the GOP in the senate can stop this runaway train or at least slow it down a bit.

Sarah Palin is a “force of nature.” These are not my words, but the words of some die hard feminists like Camille Paglia and others like the former editor of Ms. Magazine or the president of Los Angeles NOW.

Paglia, a staunch Obama supporter, had this to say in one of her Slate columns:

I like Sarah Palin, and I’ve heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is — and quite frankly, I think the people who don’t see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn’t speak the King’s English — big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns — that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

Quotes like this from traditional opponents of the GOP have sent the Liberal Left running for their antacids. So if people like Paglia can recognize the incredible depth and raw talent of Palin then why can’t the GOP? Why have they been so inept at using her to help fuel its revival? They don’t need to wait until 2010 or 2012 or even 2016. They can start using her today.

First of all let’s understand who Palin is. She is not a politician she is a civil servant in the traditional sense of the word. She’s an ordinary citizen who didn’t like the way things were being run so she ran for office to try and fix them. If anything, she is the incarnation of the “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” ideal. Until  the ‘08 election I don’t think she had any serious ambitions beyond the state of Alaska. She loves Alaska and Alaska loves her.

Sarah is a non-intellectual. This doesn’t mean she’s not intelligent. It means she doesn’t carry with her all the baggage the great politician factories like Harvard and Yale try to infuse into the DNA of their graduates. As Yuval Levin put it:

This is why Palin was seen as anti-intellectual when, properly speaking, she was simply non-intellectual. What she lacked was not intelligence—she is, clearly, highly intelligent—but rather the particular set of assumptions, references, and attitudes inculcated by America’s top twenty universities and transmitted by the nation’s elite cultural organs.

In simple terns, Sarah was deemed a knuckle dragging Luddite simply because she didn’t use the traditional “Washington-speak” most people are used to hearing from politicians.

Palin does something quite naturally that most politicians have to spend years learning. She connects with people. More people watched her speech at the GOP convention than watched Obama’s Invesco Field Hollywood Extravaganza. Obama spent 4 million on his speech while Palin and the GOP spent less than 150 thousand dollars on some fancy clothes and shoes. As Lorne Michaels, creator of SNL renowned for his ability to spot nascent talent, said, “She is very powerful…she connects with people.”

In all of this a mystique has grown up around Sarah Palin. “Is she really that down-to-earth?” “How could an attractive woman be in politics and not get herself into some kind of scandal along the way?” “What does she really believe about foreign policy?” This mystique is part of the reason why the liberal media can’t leave her alone. At once they both fear her potential and are drawn to her by a compelling curiosity. It is part of the reason, I think, that so many people (70,000 at a Florida rally) flock to see her when given the chance.

It’s time the party and the conservative movement understood Palin’s potential and put it to use.

How should they do this?

• Palin needs to get hold of a good media savvy team and perfect her public image. Then Sarah Palin should start hosting GOP fund raisers across the country. People of all political stripes would gladly pay to meet her, talk to her or just satisfy their curiosity.
• Palin’s ability to attract media attention should be put to good use. One of the challenges we face is getting the MSM to pay serious attention to the conservative point of view. The GOP should craft its message and then give it to Palin to be the messenger to the MSM. They will pay attention to her and she will get heard. I think she’s the only Republican who can successfully wrestle the spotlight away from Obama at this point. Don’t forget that more people watch Palin debate Joe Biden than watched any of the McCain-Obama debates.
• Palin needs to campaign for local republicans whenever possible. This would bring national attention to the candidate and…well…might actually help them win.

I agree that Sarah Palin is a force of nature. Sarah Palin is not the next Ronald Reagan, she is the first Sarah Palin. It’s time the GOP put her to work using her natural ability to re-energize the conservative movement and rescue the country from the Left.