Promoted from diaries.  Now spread it around. - Moe Lane

As of August 31, 2009, since the Nov. 2008 election, the Maricopa County Republican Party has increased its precinct committeeman ranks by over 21 per cent. The Party had, in Nov., 2008, 1,989 precinct committeemen representing the 694,000 registered Republican voters in Maricopa County. The quota was 6,231. Thus, the Party was at less than one-third “fighting” strength. Those 1,989 were split about 50-50 between moderates and conservatives.

No more.

Since November, we’ve recruited 434 more PCs. Most at Tea Parties and congresscritter protests. Most, if not all, of these new recruits are conservatives – I’ve been to a lot of Tea Parties and protests – and talked to a lot of people at them in my efforts to recruit PCs – and I’ve yet to meet a moderate.

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Promoted from the diaries by Jeff. While I’ve registered my disagreement with sentiments like those contained in this diary, and have publicly expressed my desire for Ms. Palin to disappear from the public political eye as quickly as possible now that she has left the office to which she was elected, this diary is both well-written and expressive of the enthusiasm that far-from-insignificant number of die-hard Palin fans share, and it represents a point of view I recognize as every bit as valid as my own on the matter. -JE

Back in the mid 1990’s The Chrysler Corporation went public with a really new and exciting business model. The company best known for the K-car and inventing the mini-van at that point in time, had spent a lot of time behind the scenes to totally remake the company. They threw everything out, and started fresh. New “cab-forward” styling on their cars, and a brand new pickup truck, the first completely new truck in 25 years, and a completely refocused management, design, and manufacturing team.

Chrysler became the most exciting car company around. Envied by the other manufacturers. It really was the rebirth of a company that since the it’s formation had always been recognized as one of the best at engineering. This brought Chrysler back in a big way. Record sales, especially in trucks, helped Chrysler show healthy profits. If fact, Chrysler became so successful, Mercedes-Benz would soon come knocking with a bundle of cash and an offer!

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I have listened carefully to the Health Care debate currently raging all across this country.  There are two things that I have realized, after listening to the only people who really count – the American citizens – 1.  Most Americans want more affordable health care, with a wide range of choices and options; 2.  The politicians in Washington continue to ignore the wishes of the people.

Congress and the President continue to focus on a mandated plan, one that will require every American to have health care and will penalize those who don’t, with some politicians advocating fines of up to $1,000 per person, for those who don’t have coverage.  In typical Washington “speak” no one really wants to discuss the cost of such a system, or the reduced care that will surely result.  I don’t believe for a minute that the American people will accept a system like the Canadian system or the system in Great Britain.  A wait of six months for urgently needed tests and surgery is simply unacceptable.  In Canada, many Canadians wait even longer, and end up opting to go to the States for the surgeries they need.

I believe strongly in the genius of the American people.  They know what kind of care they want and how they expect to pay for it.  They know that they do not want a single payer government operated system.  Why in the world would we trust politicians and bureaucrats in Washington to manage our health care system?  They haven’t been able to handle any of the major problems facing our country.

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There has been much discussion around these parts of late about “50%ers,” “squishes,” “moderates,” and all manner of other adjectives to describe those who do not appear to be “strict” conservatives.  But what does that mean?

As I’ve stated here several times, conservatism isn’t binary.  There is no on- or off-switch that magically turns one into a conservative.  And although there are philosophers, authors, etc. who have created great works describing the conservative mind and philosophy, most conservatives have not read them, and even if we have, there are few who consistently follow the philosophy.

We have many in DC who we identify as conservatives, yet many/most of them occasionally anger us over their apparent “straying off the ranch” with votes that don’t meet our expectations.  But is that unexpected?  Shouldn’t we expect that  there are precious few “100 percenters” out there?  Where do we draw the line?  What turns a good Senator or Representative into a conservative turncoat?  Look at it this way:

One can draw a line anywhere along that continuum.  Where is the acceptable place to draw it, and how do you determine where it goes?  Do we use National Journal rankings?  American Conservative Union?  The Club for Growth?   But more interesting to me is:  is there a litmus test that disqualifies a politician from being considererd “conservative?”  What is it?  How many litmus tests are they allowed to fail before being rejected?  Is our view of things more like this:

What drives the location of that dividing line?

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Much has been made lately of the Republican Party’s struggles – the latest involving the defection of Arlen Specter to the Democrat Party.

The fight has been cast by the commentariat and a few Republican politicians as a fight between ideological “purists” who, it is said, seek to shrink the Party, and the pragmatic sort who understand the need to remain inclusive.

I do not believe that is accurate – and it undermines the task before us to describe it so basically and so thoughtlessly. My observation is that when everyone is saying, essentially, the same thing, there is little thought behind it at all. How many times can yet another writer, observer, or “thinker” sitting in his office in Washington or New York explain to those of us in the trenches that we simply need to “be more accommodating,” and need to “expand the tent?”

They act as if conservatives want a small tent, to continue to use this tired and overused metaphor (used by many who have never been in a tent other than those put up at a horse race, wedding or fundraiser - by rich people for other rich people). Specifically, they misinterpret Senator DeMint’s recent remark suggesting he’d rather have 30 conservatives in the Senate than 60 unreliable ones to mean he wants to be in the minority.

NO. NO. NO. Of course he doesn’t (nor do any of us) want a minority Party. But he is saying, I believe, that if our Party cannot unite behind freedom and limited government, then what is the point of having 60?

In today’s Wall Street journal, Senator DeMint outlines his vision for the Party – and it is a vision appropriately rooted in the unifying power of freedom. These are the poles necessary to hold up the tent, he rightly contends. He says:

To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a “big tent” party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party — the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats — must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can’t agree on that, elections are the least of our problems.

I commend the full text of op-ed to you, and ask that your forward it to your friends and family. This is an important discussion that should not be monopolized by the “thinkers” in ivory towers who mischaracterize a belief in freedom and limited government as a “purity” test, when they offer nothing in the alternative but polls, weak policy ideas rooted in desperate populism and theories on “messaging.” This is not leadership.

Senator DeMint leads with a vision rooted in our fundamental principles and American exceptionalism.

A Roll Call story by John Stanton just posted that references our conversation here regarding the importance of Jeff Sessions being Judiciary Committee Republican Ranking Member instead of Chuck Grassley or Orrin Hatch. The most significant paragraphs are below:

The conservative blog redstate.com and other activists and media outlets already have started pushing back against Grassley. They are organizing call-ins to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) office, urging him to block his ascension on the panel. Redstate.com urges readers to register their opposition to the Grassley plan, arguing that “to have Orrin Hatch or Chuck Grassley at the helm would be an unmitigated disaster. Each are cut from the same cloth — that of the old guard Republicans in the Senate who have given us the train wreck that the Party has become.”

A GOP leadership aide, however, said there is little that McConnell can do at this point, and the Minority Leader is almost certain to avoid choosing sides in the brewing dispute. But the source said that if Grassley can persuade enough Members to back him, the Conference rules allow for it.

That may be technically true under the rules - but this is precisely the problem. Leaders - real leaders - recognize the goal and do what they need to do to attain it. That is what Mitch McConnell needs to do. Lead, dang it. Jeff Sessions is a capable, smart, conservative lawyer - and is the right man to lead the Committee right now. Chuck Grassley is not the guy to do it - and the old Senate guard “seniority” structure shouldn’t be the deciding factor on how to proceed.

Full text of the article follows and a reminder that Mitch McConnell’s phone number is 202-224-3121 (call your Senator, too, if he’s Republican).

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The watermelons (green outside, pink inside) on the left continue to FAIL to get a handle on the Law of Unintended Consequences.

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Few books come along that I actually believe everyone should read. There simply are not that many good books in the world today, much less ones that most people could possibly get something out of. But, our friend Mark Levin has written such a book – and I recommend that we conservatives should either give, or promote, the book to literally everyone we know.

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto manages to take a number of complex legal, historical, and philosophical concepts and distill them into a well-constructed but easy-to-read snapshot of our current state of affairs. That is not an easy thing to do.

We live in a strange time. As Mark points out in his book, “[s]o distant is America today from its founding principles that it is difficult to precisely describe the nature of American government.” He notes that we are hardly a constitutional republic, federalist republic and/or representative republic – rather, we are instead a “society steadily transitioning toward statism.”

Indeed, “Statist” is the term he uses artfully to more accurately define the Modern Liberal as one who “believes in the supremacy of the state.” This concept is a constant theme throughout his book – and offers an important and necessary shift in thinking for conservatives toward a firm recognition that those who oppose us are committed to the state rather than liberty.

In the closing of his introductory chapter, Mark points out the following:

The Conservative is alarmed by the ascent of a soft tyranny and its cheery acceptance by the neo-Statist. He knows that liberty once lost is rarely recovered. He knows of the decline and eventual failure of past republics. And he knows that the best prescription for addressing society’s real and perceived ailments to is not to further empower an already enormous federal government beyond its constitutional limits, but to return to the founding principles. A free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation, and a government operating within the limits of its authority promote more opportunity, prosperity and opportunity than any alternative. Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny because its principles are the founding principles.

Well said – and instructive during a time when Republicans, as we’ve discussed before, need to get back to basics and stand for something meaningful – something beyond thoughtless, supposedly politically-expedient efforts to buy votes and to “appeal” to certain demographics.

Getting back into power is not reason enough to stand on our basic conservative principles even though it may be the result. We need more than power-seeking – we need to stand on principle to fight the Statist… to inspire new generations of Americans to look to themselves rather than the State for progress… and to band together in the most noble of earthly causes - to preserve and protect liberty against tyranny. Thanks, Mark. Well done.

Democrat-Light has another cheerleader and his name is Bruce Bartlett.  Bartlett, former Reagan and Bush 41 Treasury official, writes in the Politico today in a piece titled “Conservatives Must to Adapt to the Welfare State” that:

If conservatives refuse to participate in the debate over how revenues will be raised, then liberals will do it on their own, which will likely give us much higher tax rates and a tax system that is more harmful to growth than necessary to fund the government. Instead of opposing any tax hike, I think it makes more sense for conservatives to figure out how best to raise the additional revenue that will be raised in any event. 

Bartlett is wrong.   Conservatives should not cut and run from the core principles of the conservatism that we need to keep taxes low and fight expansions of the welfare state.  Bartlett makes the classic argument that Republicans need give up principle to be in the room when deals are cut.

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