Fast forward to 2013, I had a similar experience as I was talking to someone whom I had never discussed public policy with before who I agreed with. This person however, didn’t seem to understand that I agreed with him, as he shouted at me that he was correct and didn’t understand that I agreed with him.  It is an all too common problem with people trying to promote ideas that have made America successful (without the sexism, sorry to people who’d love to pin that on us), we seem to have a lot of people yelling about what makes America great which is understandable. The fact of the matter is, Americans don’t really seem to get it, they keep voting for the same candidates and the same policies over and over and over. Believe me, I live in California, where anyone with half a brain can pick up the ballot, look up the arguments, and determine what is going to harm our state is probably what is going to win.

Shouting, yelling, screaming, no matter how true or false (as the Anchormen in the film hilariously were) will never ever get your point across. Leonardo DaVinci once said, “Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.” Indeed, when you shout, yell and scream all people hear is the tone and cadence of your voice. Should that be the case if you have something significant to say? Probably not, but it’s the reality and it may be the reason we keep on losing.

The truth is, the people of this country need an education on what this country is all about. They need to be taught American principles about conditions that create hard work, integrity, ingenuity, and creativity. I understand it is incredibly frustrating to try, face rejection, and try again, but we must! It’s important for the future of this country.

Cross-posted at The America Project

Dear Ms. Reid:

I understand you are not interested in understanding conservatives and conservatism and are first and foremost a liberal Democrat trying to undermine and marginalize the Republican Party. But Ms. Reid, have you no dignity? The video clearly shows the reaction to Mr. Terry. It was one of shock, people laughing at the absurdity of his absolutely vile suggestion that slavery was good for African Americans. Little Green Footballs, a liberal blog, did some research on Mr. Terry and found that he is a white supremacist outlier, clearly not in the mainstream of conservative thought. He also does not think like a conservative, talking about “black group interest” and “white group interest” Ms. Reid, conservatives don’t believe in “group interest” we believe in individual interest. We don’t subscribe to the theory about “Booker T Washington Republicanism” that Mr. Terry puts forth because we believe each individual has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We believe that natural rights as outlined in the Declaration of Independence can not be regulated by the government. It is why the Republican Party was founded. To eradicate the absolute abomination that was slavery in this country. It would be absurd to think slavery even existed in this country if the effects of slavery were not felt today. That is what we think, Ms. Reid. And we think Mr. Terry is an abominable whack job.

Dear Mr. Terry,

You said that the Republican Party is going after minorities at the expense of young southern whites. You are completely missing the point. We’re after freedom loving Americans from all backgrounds of all ethnicities. We are for individual liberty for every American. And we are tired of morons like you trying to co-opt our movement. It looks like you’re apart of a lot of groups who espouse “Christianity” in their beliefs. It would do you well to meet a man named Jesus, learn about what he stood for and rethink your views of your fellow human beings.

Dear Mainstream Media and especially MSNBC,

As I recall, when half of the Democratic National Convention booed recognizing the state of Israel in it’s party platform, you went to great lengths to ensure your audience that it was merely an “oversight” on behalf of party organizers. Look, I’m not for conservatives whining about main stream media coverage. For one thing, you’re a dying breed. For another, people are going to have their biases, it’s human nature. But this is just silly. We had a weekend of speeches from the future stars of the Republican Party. Sarah Palin drank a Big Gulp and blasted Karl Rove, Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian, won the CPAC Staw Poll by a comfortable margin and you’re choosing to cover some random whack job troll in a breakout session? You’ve got to be kidding me. While some conservatives asked questions about it, most weren’t out trying to paint the Democratic Party as anti-semitic following the incident at the DNC.

Perhaps if your reporters actually spent time with real conservatives and got to learn their cultures, perhaps they wouldn’t be so quick to jump on stories like this. It honestly just hurts your credibility at this point.

Ms. Reid, MSM, and MSNBC, despite our honest disagreements, I wish you the best.

Mr. Terry, I wish you would find the real Jesus and free yourself of your oppressive hate.

Sincerely,

J. Leg

Let me explain.

Before the peace movement of the 1960s and 1970s and, to an extent, The Franklin Roosevelt Administration, the foreign policy position of liberals within the Democratic Party and Progressives in the Republican Party was one of interventionism.

So where did all those hawkish liberals go? Well, they went to the Republican Party. And while some of the current interventionists may have started as conservatives, they have gradually adopted liberalism of their formerly liberal forefathers.

John McCain. Lindsey Graham. David Frum. Bill Kristol. Susan Collins. The Wall Street Journal.  These are all people and publications who have advocated the GOP surrender to higher taxes, compromise on spending plans that dramatically increase our deficit and have the federal government intervene on issues there is no constitutional right to intervene on, like education.

The neocons invaded the George W. Bush administration – and it got us two wars that were incredibly expensive and a Middle East that is worse off now than it was when we first went in. Yes, Saddam Hussein is gone, but so is the secular government he’d ran, replaced by an Islamic Republic (allowed by Bush), that has elements of radicalism seeping out. To make matters worse, we’ve now had five years of the worst elements of hapless liberalism and neoconservativism working together to “keep our country safe.”

It’s time we dump the neocons and replace them with traditional conservatives. Full throated isolationism? No. But we need leaders who recognize keeping our military strong is keeping them out of conflicts they don’t need to be in. We need the world to know that if anyone threatens our security we will not be tied up, we will be ready to take the fight directly to them. We need to make sure that if our men and women are fighting for us, they’re fighting for us for a good reason.

President Reagan had US Armed Forces ready to go in case the Soviets wanted to try and start anything, but it was always a last resort for him. He fought the Cold War and won it, as former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher so eloquently put it, “without firing a single shot” (Lady Thatcher also had a big part to play in that.)

I am grateful to the men and women who bravely defended our country during these two wars. But they deserve better than fighting useless wars or defending a country that doesn’t acknowledge our Constitution. If neoconservatives are truly committed to the defense of this country, if they are committed to shrinking the size of government, and keeping powers within the bounds of the Constitution, they have a place in our movement, otherwise, they should go elsewhere.

1) Be yourself.  There’s nothing worse than hearing a parade of white Democrats going through black churches suddenly sounding like Bishop T.D. Jakes. In fact, it’s downright embarrassing! We should go to those places but we should be ourselves. We should feel comfortable in our own skin.

2) Be confident. “First you win the argument, then you win the vote.” Lady Margaret Thatcher’s admonition to her conservative party through the 1980s rang as true now as it does now. The fact is – our policies are the absolute best policies for ALL Americans, some of them specifically for African Americans, Hispanics, and Women. You can win an argument if you’re not confident in it. It seems like a large swath of the moderate wing of our party seems to believe our policies suck. These people should take a note from former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani or former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, both of these Republicans are moderates don’t feel the need to bash conservatives in their party and they choose to focus on the common ground they have with conservatives and they argue the conservative case with passion while also defending us against lame MSM attacks. We can openly disagree, but we must be united and confident in our message!

3) Be smart. Focus on common ground with the audience you have. Just because our policies are consistent and help ALL Americans doesn’t mean we have to have the same message promoting those policies for every audience. Every successful salesperson will tell you every customer is different, so the message is going to be slightly different for every audience. If we have boots on the ground who can do the listening part, our politicians can do the messaging part. Ideally, every congressional district would have a Republican candidate, and that Republican candidate would know the ins and outs of the district, so if a presidential or gubernatorial candidate came through, they could meet with that candidate and get a rundown on what the message needs to be.

4) Be congenial. Our talk radio talking heads have done more for the conservative movement than I will ever do, so please do not take this as me bashing them. But there seems to be a knee jerk reaction to buck our politically correct culture. So when someone calls something “offensive.” Their reaction is to go ahead and say it again. We need to learn to be a little bit more congenial. Let’s assume the best of every American. When someone is on welfare, most of the time, it’s most likely not because their lazy (which is , it’s probably because they’ve run into hard times, they’re suffering an addiction, or they’re caught in a terrible cycle of government dependence. Let’s assume those Americans want to better themselves, want to work, want to break free of any addiction. This is where we can be “compassionate.” Let’s not assume Latinos sneaking into the US want our social services, let’s assume they’re here to work hard, to provide a better future for their children. Let’s lay the blame of the massive, bloated social welfare state at the feet of the people responsible: The Democrat Party, not the people who’s votes we’re trying to win.

5) Call the Democrats Bluff. When the Democrats go into black neighborhoods and say, “We want to make sure everyone’s vote is counted.” Let’s call their bluff, “I want to make sure your votes are counted and I want to make sure their not voided by voter fraud.” When they say, “Voter ID is suppressive because minorities can’t afford them.” Let’s propose a policy that would guarantee every American who can’t afford an ID a free one. Democrats can’t resist a federal government program right? Let’s not let Democrats control this conversation any more.

My guess is that the GOP consultants are going to suggest changing policies. While I think we can be a little flexible and give small adjustments here and there, let’s not forget freedom and liberty is a message that has inspired people for millennia. We shouldn’t suddenly dump it because we lost a couple of elections. There’s a lot we can do that we haven’t been doing.

All data points to right to work laws creating jobs in states that have them. The left have arguments too, chiefly that right to work laws tend to produce lower paying jobs (to which I would respond, “it’s better than no jobs and permanently crippling industries with dirty union games.”)

Why does WSJ and other media outlets insist on making a political argument? In WSJ’s case, it’s mimicking what the rest of the overwhelmingly liberal media do. The only way the left can win arguments is on politics. Politics is fantasy land you see, governing? That’s the real world and when the arguments are actually broken down, when the conversation becomes about policies that are a success versus policies that are miserable failures they lose every single time.

Republican elected officials should not fall into the trap of left. Let’s talk about the actual policies. They’ll find that half the time the left has no actual policy argument and the other half of the time, their policy arguments are flimsy at best, but mostly laughable.

If conservatives want to begin the process of refashioning their image, they can start out with the most fundamental rebranding technique of all: changing their name.

That’s, after all, what the left did. In the two decades since Ronald Reagan turned the term “liberal” into a kind of epithet, liberals have chosen to drop it and call themselves “progressives.”

At first, it might seem like a rather jarring prospect. Conservatives have proudly worn that badge through the 20th century. It made sense too, as the Democrats and some Republicans (I’m looking at you Teddy Roosevelt!) began guiding America down the road toward socialism, “conservative” became an appropriate term. We were the people who wanted to hold back all of the “progressive” change that was happening in the early 20th century, we wanted to take America back to it’s roots: the Constitution, freedom, liberty. We wanted to conserve what made America great. “Conservative” became a badge of pride through the 20th century with great leaders from Senator Robert Taft leading the conservative Republicans in congress, to President Calvin Coolidge, Senator Barry Goldwater, and President Ronald Reagan. And those are just some of the elected officials, not to mention countless other men and women who made the case in  various other forms. America experienced unparalleled prosperity under Presidents Coolidge and Reagan, only to be thwarted by weak kneed moderate Republicans following their tenure. But that was the 20th century. Unfortunately, most of the Republican presidents either sat idle while progressive Democrats socialized our country if not even assisting them in doing so in the 2000′s.

Socialism is now the norm. No, it’s not the obvious cradle to the grave entitlement state of European variety, but anyone can receive some form of  government assistance now in America from birth to death. It is now the norm. It is the status quo, there are few people in our country who know or remember anything else but this. And unfortunately most people expect it to be there.

The term “conservative” no longer fits us, it’s actually not who we are. Anything our forefathers in the conservative movement were trying to preserve is gone. There are social conservatives, but they are only part (a large and important part) of the movement. Look at the definition of conservative does this accurately describe us? (from Apple’s Dictionary)

con•serv•a•tive |k?n?s?rv?tiv|adjective holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.

ORIGIN late Middle English (in the sense ‘aiming to preserve’): from late Latin conservativus, from conservat- ‘conserved,’ from the verb conservare (see conserve).

Does reforming major entitlements like social security and medicare sound cautious to you? Yes, we opposed ObamaCare, but our proposals for health care reform were far more of an overhaul than ObamaCare was, except it would have actually made health care cheaper and more accessible. Does a fundamental restructuring of our tax code to spur economic growth sound like something that’s “conservative”?

The fact is, we have ceased being the conservatives. But we still behave like we are the conservatives. A conservative mind set is on the defensive, it’s protective, it obstructs. It is not offensive, innovative or facilitative. We’re holding on to dear life for things we actually should be fighting for because they’re not there anymore.

You may say it’s just a word, but language matters. Words matter. We need a term that inspires us to fight again. Mr. Koffler has a suggestion and I can’t say I disagree with him:

And now it’s time for the right to discard the term “conservative” and start describing themselves as … liberals.

That’s right, liberals.

If Democrats are going to leave “liberal” lying around, conservatives should immediately scoop it up and make it their own. Because it was theirs to begin with.

He’s right. Prior to the 20th century, people with our philosophy were called liberals because pretty much everyone had a “conservative” understanding about what America was all about. “Liberal” stemming from liberty, is an economic philosophy that emphasized less government involvement, lower taxes, and less regulations. It wasn’t just an American philosophy, it was a philosophy that was quite popular all over the world. In fact the center-right parties of many countries around the world are called the “Liberal Party” – the prime example that I can think of off the top of my head is in Australia.

Shedding “conservative” and embracing “liberal” would do a few important things for us. It would get us to start thinking like a “liberal” – fighting for what we believe rather than holding onto something that’s long gone. It would reinvigorate  us to remember what our party was founded on – liberty, freedom, and opportunity for all people no matter their background. And it would make us fresh to people who believe conservatism is stale.

Of course, it would be awkward to have people who blasted the term “liberal” for years suddenly embrace it, so Koffler suggests we start by calling ourselves “classic liberals.”

Whatever we do, we can not abandon the principles of our party. We have to articulate the prosperity they bring so that we can win elections.

I get the sneaking suspicion that President Obama and the Democrats really aren’t all that concerned or serious about the debt and deficit. Even serious liberal economists (I’m NOT looking at you, Paul Krugman) acknowledge we need permanent tax reform (broadening the base by lowering the rates) along with spending cuts in order to get our economy roaring again.

No, this “fiscal cliff” talk is all designed to do one thing: make our economy “fair” in the liberals view. Yes, this is all about the left believing that the so called rich (where I live, a household income of $250,000 means you can afford to buy a house in a decent neighborhood) don’t pay enough. It has nothing to do with the fiscal crisis we’ve been in for years now.

Speaker Boehner needs to stop playing footsie with the President and demand he get serious about the issues we’re facing.

In 2012 conservatives and libertarians were split between Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Ron Paul. And some conservatives supported “compassionate conservative” (aka fiscal moderate) Rick Santorum, whom the establishment deemed acceptable. But it was Romney who consolidated the moderates and the people who don’t pay attention and vote for the “next in line” and won the nomination.

Let’s rewind t0 2008, what were conservatives saying? “Let’s keep our eyes on 2010.” It payed off, we won the midterms by one of the largest margins in a long time. But what was going on in that election? Mitt Romney was collecting chips, making endorsements, testing the waters. Other candidates were as well. Sarah Palin was endorsing winner after winner, leading some to think she may throw her hat into the ring. There was talk of what all this meant for 2012, “Keep your eye on the ball,” activists would say, “We’ll talk about 2012 when 2010 is over.” But as the new Tea Party Congress was being sworn in, it was too late. Romney was well into planning announcing his second run for the presidency. Palin, who would have been a natural rallying point for tea party conservatives (and I believe other conservatives and libertarians once she began campaigning) was beat to the punch by Michele Bachmann, whom Palin would have been too easily compared to. (Unfortunate as it is, with so few women running, that’s the reality.) And this new energized wing of the party found itself with no leader to rally behind.

It sickens me to pick up my iPad and read about how Jeb Bush is trying to “navigate” the waters on a 2016 run for the presidency and how his son George P. Bush has filed to run for statewide office in Texas but “isn’t sure” which one yet. I can’t think of a more perfect picture of entitlement and American aristocracy. We cannot afford another four to eight years of this family determining the course of the Republican Party, or worse, the nation. While Chris Christie wouldn’t be entitled (actually, I think he’d be quite grateful, which would be really refreshing), his moderate stands on issues make him a non-starter for me. We can’t afford moderation, we need a clear, concise conservative message in 2016, and we need a president with some courage to make it happen!

So my fellow conservatives, we need to keep an eye on how Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, and Rand Paul (three conservative/libertarians who are making movement on 2016) during these midterms, see how they fair on the national stage and rally behind no more than two of them for 2016. It should be abundantly clear to us whom we should support by time the midterms come along. With the nature of presidential campaigns these days, it will be too late by time primary season starts. Let’s keep one eye focused on 2014, and the other firmly on 2016.

While it’s never said outright, Lincoln and the Republicans argument against slavery is that it violates our founding principles. Slavery was never a natural fit for our country, which is why we nearly split in large part over the issue. Lincoln has a conversation with morse code operators about “self-evident” rights, a clear reference to the Declaration of Independence. One of the Democrats asks Rep. Thaddeus Stephens, leader of the “radical Republicans”, whether he believes the preamble of the declaration is meant to be “literal” and whether he believes blacks are equal to whites. Stephens doesn’t take a principled stand on the issue (it would have been very easy for Spielberg to “Hollywood-ize” it and have him do it), but makes a political calculation that eases concerns of the Democrats on the fence and Republicans uneasy about change. Modern liberals try to latch on to figures like Lincoln and Stephens, but both make it clear their argument against slavery is less about economic equality and government activism (both tennets of the modern left) as it is about liberty and freedom.

For this, Spielberg and his screenwriter Tony Kushner (another liberal) deserve great praise for their film. It would have been easy for them to twist history, to add a jab at modern Republicans, but they don’t do this. They make a historical film that captures one of the great moments of our nation’s history. The film itself is beautiful, the dark cinematography giving the ominous feeling of war, even if we see very little of it on the screen. Despite being unmercilessly  wonky, the film’s pacing is brisk mostly because of the performances in the film, which cannot earn enough praise.

Tommy Lee Jones is a stand-out as that ol’ “radical Republican” Thaddeus Stephens. Jones not only delivers a powerful performance that reminds us that sometimes it takes someone unpolished and unrefined to get things done, he seems like he is having a blast playing the character. Jones also manages to pull off a rural 19th century Pennsylvanian very well, hiding his Texan accent as well as he can, though it slipping out a little bit works well for the character. Sally Field is very good as fragile First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary says in the film that people will remember Abe as a “good man” and his wife as “crazy”. While Field’s performance does show that side of her, there is also a good natured pleasantness that comes through of her. David Strathairn and Joseph Gordon-Levitt also give great performances as Secretary of State William Seward and Robert Lincoln, the eldest son of the president. James Spader, Hal Holbrook, and Lee Pace also give great performances in the film. Spader in particular was a lot of fun to watch.

But the performance that really makes this film is Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of President Lincoln. Many have complained about Lincoln’s voice, but I actually liked it, it reminded me a little bit of President Reagan’s voice. The wit and warmth Day-Lewis brings to the role is quite remarkable and it just goes to show that the best quality a president can have is his/her ability to deal with people. Like Meryl Streep last year, playing this real-life world leader has put Day-Lewis in the lead to win the Best Actor Oscar. Day-Lewis will make you genuinely like Lincoln and feel a real sadness when his assassination has been announced. Many have said that President Obama can learn a thing or two from Lincoln, I’d say any politician should watch this film and watch what real leadership looks like.

Overall, this was a brilliant film! I would highly recommend going to see it. It reminds us conservatives of the greatness of our nation’s founding principles. And Republicans will be reminded that liberty is something worth fighting for!

But the terms “liberal” and “conservative” become most fitting after either side looses elections. When liberals lose, they go to work to innovate, rework, and repackage their stale, worn out, disproved policies. When conservatives lose, it seems like we hunker down, Jedidiah Bila submits a typical reaction from some conservatives to suggestions of inclusion of blacks, Hispanics, asians, young people etc.

Every time I suggest better, smarter GOP outreach to young people, Hispanics, African Americans, and women, many in the GOP old guard wave their pointer fingers at me and insist that I am advocating pandering, that I am allying myself with the Left’s divide and conquer tactics.

“Pandering” “racializing” seems to be a fear of the right. This gets mistaken and stroked by the left as “racism”, but it’s actually the opposite in it’s intention. These conservatives want to live in a world described by Martin Luther King Jr. where people are not judged by “the color of their skin” but by “the content of their character.” That’s all fine and dandy and admirable, but we live in a very different world. We live in a world were Democrats have convinced minorities that they will die in the streets without social services, that Republicans want to “return to the policies of Jim Crow” at best (I’m using quotations, because it’s an exact quotation from several prominent Democrats) and more recently in this election, “slavery” at worst. Democrats have convinced young women that being pro-life is equivalent to wanting to probe them and be the most invasive of their privacy imaginable. They have convinced Latinos that we want nothing to do with them.

It’s not the message that has to change — freedom, liberty, the Constitution — all of it is essential to what America is about. But how we present that message and who we present that message to has to change. It’s going to require a lot of hard work with perhaps very little initial pay off, but it is absolutely essential to our survival as a movement. The Democrats accuse us of stroking the fears of old, white males, but it’s not that we’re intentionally stroking them, it’s who the main demographic of our party is because the Democrats have sliced and diced every other group into reliable voting blocs for them. The presentation needs to tailor to these groups without changing the message. And the presentation needs to be determined by talking to these groups, finding out what they believe, what their hopes, aspirations, and dreams are. That’s what America is about, the idea that you can come from nothing and succeed. No other nation on earth offers anyone that opportunity the way America does, even with Obama as president. When you sell a product, it doesn’t change, but you change the way you sell it depending on who you’re talking to and what you have found out about them. That’s the way we’ve got to approach this.

We’re conservatives, by instinct, we want to protect what we know to be true, what we know works, and what we know will make America and it’s people successful. This is an incredibly positive trait, but what we can’t do is double down on political tactics that haven’t worked. We’ve got to develop something new, we’ve got to find new conservatives, and we’ve got to build a coalition that can win elections and save America.

The quote has been attributed to many a people, and this presidential election has got many a conservative, including talk show host Sean Hannity and columnist Charles Krauthammer thinking this way. Hannity has said he has “evolved” on the issue of immigration, Charules Krauthammer believes conservatives should embrace the word “amnesty.”

To be completely honest with you, I’ve never had a problem with amnesty for illegal immigrants with no criminal records. What are we going to do? Round them up and send them home? Not only is it impractical, it’s also incredibly cruel, considering their reasons for coming here. We need to seal the border and figure out an amnesty for people who are already here without crimimal record, in my view.

But if conservatives believe that suddenly supporting immigration reform is going to be the magic bullet for their issues with Hispanic voters, they’ve got another thing coming. Let me give them a clue: the reason Hispanics don’t vote GOP isn’t because the GOP has opposed amnesty, the reason they oppose Republicans is because of circumstances illustrated by the other reaction to the result: “You can’t beat Santa Claus”, said Rush Limbaugh, the top rated conservative talk radio host in the country. Mark Levin, the third most listened to host said something similar and has made a similar argument that illegals want to mooch off of our social services.

I studied marketing in college and I took a class on marketing to Hispanics. It was taught by Francisco Valle, who advised Meg Whitman in her gubernatorial campaign and hato conversations with Romney’s people. I had a conversation with him after class and he told me that the reason Hispanics don’t vote for the GOP is because they value respect and they do not feel that the GOP is respectful of them. He said that Whitman and Romney’s people were scared of the base and didn’t want to offer a practical solution for immigration policy. And it’s no wonder they’re scared of us. From Limbaugh and Levin’s comments you would think they assume Hispanics want hand outs, they assure they are lazy, living off our social services. Worse: they write them off saying amnesty is just an attempt to expand the base of the Democratic Party. (i.e. “They will never vote for us anyway.” which is ALWAYS a good way to be inclusive of people isn’t it?)

We’ve got to be honest with ourselves, this is not a way to include people in the conservative movement and get them to vote for our values. I don’t think older white conservative men like Limbaugh and Levin who think this way are racists, they’re just telling what they think is the truth from their perspective. They are probably just culturally ignorant of Hispanics and thats where the comments come from. In my experience, Hispanics are some of the hardest working, kind and warm people I have ever met. And illegals I have encountered are people who are just trying to make ends meat for their families and don’t have the opportunity to do it wherever they had come from. Let’s be honest: many of us have encountered illegal immigrants, maybe some of them have told us that they are. How many of us call ICE? We don’t, because there’s no need to most of the team. Most of these people are good, hardworking people and their legal US citizen relatives should be a natural fit for us politically.

So what of these sudden flips from Hannity, Krauthammer and more importantly, Speaker John Boehner to Amnesty? Won’t that win votes? Absolutely not. In the late 1950′s and early 1960′s, Republicans, including Arizona Senator and 1964 Republican Presidential Candidate, overwhelmingly supported the various incarnations of the Civil Rights Act that had come before Congress. When the 1964 version of the bill finally passed (again, with almost unanimous Republican support) Sen. Goldwater cast a vote against it saying that it included some unconstitutional provisions. Even though there were many more Democrats against President Lyndon Johnson got credit for the law he signed. And now, African Americans still believe to this day Republicans don’t support them and that Democrats were the ones that made the Civil Rights Act happen.

Make no mistake about it: If Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans pass an Amnesty bill, this time the Democrats will be heavily in favor of it and with President Obama claim credit for it and if the Republicans play the same game they have since the Civil Rights Act, Hispanics will be a solid voting bloc for the Democrats for generations to come.

Flips to Amnesty is not the answer. Respect is. Inclusion is. Newt Gingrich said, after the election, outreach is when five old white guys sit in a room and then come tell you what the plan is, inclusion is including people in the plan, it’s talking to people about conservatism and what it is. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. is a great song from Aretha Franklin, but it’s an acronym I’ve come up that I think will help us:

R – Relate: It’s not enough to talk about how great the Republican Party is for minorities. We’ve actually got to get people on the ground to talk to people about their lives. Don’t get me wrong, philosophy is important, but most people don’t have time to sit there and seriously consider philosophy. We’ve got to make philosophy more relatable to people personally.

E – Engage: Listening is good. But we also need to engage. It is an unfortunate stereotype, but many Republicans are indeed well off and some are wealthy enough that they don’t need to work. Some of us need to use that time wisely and get engaged in communities where we wouldn’t typically be engaged in. The question we need to be asking is “what needs to be done?” I would love to see an army of Republicans in Southern California volunteering in inner city after school programs helping kids with their home work. Maybe get involved with education reform activists who do much of their work in the inner-city. Find out where they need help. Presence matters, and it’s time those of us who can get engaged.

S – Salute: We need to do a better job of saluting achievements and milestones. We don’t like to do this, we feel like it’s racializing, but we’ve got to recognize the significance of the fact that a nation who once had legalized slavery has an African American president. Even if we don’t like his policies, it’s pretty incredible and speaks well of us as a people. Now, we have minorities in our party who have actually accomplished some great things. Not only is it great that they’re minorities, but they have a record of success they can be proud of as well. We need to tout Nikki Haley, Suzanna Martinez, Marco Rubio and others in our party. It’s not pandering, it’s pretty awesome that we have such a diverse party!

P – Promote: Once we’ve engaged and we’ve listen to these people’s stories, we’ve got to promote our values and how they can help them and their lives! It’s very, very important. When you work in sales you don’t just offer the same pitch to everyone, you tailor your pitch to align yourself with your prospect. It’s the same product, just a different angle of looking at it based on the prospect’s life and what they’re looking for. It is the same thing in politics, we’ve got to get better at it!

E – Encourage: We’ve got to encourage people who are not aligned with us to look into the issue a little deeper. Rapper Mos Def went on to Real Time with Bill Maher where the late Christopher Hitchens was also on as a guest. Mos Def, an African American, was making disparaging remarks about Bush’s War on Terror that weren’t well informed, but amusing. The white liberals in the audience laughed hysterically (some of them were quite funny), but Hitchens wouldn’t have it. He challenged Mos Def on what he was saying and encouraged him to be better informed. Some commentators noted it was illustrative of the difference between a European liberal, like Hitchens and American liberals, who view African Americans and other minorities as court jesters. I think there’s truth to that. One of my friends who is an African American hairdresser and holds conservative views told me that when she told one of her black clients she was supporting Mitt Romney, her client told her Romney wanted to eliminate Martin Luther King Jr Day. It wasn’t even remotely true and she politely informed her client that it wasn’t. There is a lot of here say and ignorance about the relationship between the GOP and minorities. We have to learn to respectfully encourage people to be better informed about the facts.

Connect: There is a culture snobbery tradition in the GOP. Like old school legalistic Christianity in the US, there seems to be the idea that people must behave before they can believe in our values and THEN if they do that then they can belong. We’ve got to move the “belong” to the front of the pack. When Arlen Specter jumped ship from the Republicans to the Democrats they accepted him with open arms. We’ve got to do that with people tired of the Democrats useless policies even if they don’t fully agree with us. The order has to be Belong-Believe-Behave. It’s good to see conservatives welcome former Rep. Artur Davis to our ranks (even though as a Democrats he agreed a lot with us anyway.) We’ve got to make sure we’re doing that with folks on the ground as well. Minds won’t be changed outside the party.

T – Teach: Listening is good, but we’ve got to educate. We need people, similar to Greenpeace, who educate people about conservative values on highways and byways.

Respect will go a long way in helping us reach new people.

First of all, thank you. Thank you for meaning what you say, for promoting limited government and true fiscal conservatism. It’s one thing to say these things, it’s another thing altogether to actually govern that way. You have one of the best governing records of all time and I am sorry that you did not resonate in the GOP primaries more. You have some differences with many in the Republican base, but I think they would have appreciated your voice in the debates.

And the base is why I am writing this to you, Gov. Johnson and many other Libertarians who have jumped ship from the Republican Party. We need a base expansion in the GOP. The establishment is calling for us to moderate, but I think this is a big mistake. The fact of the matter is you got 1.1 million votes in this last election, while Romney would still have lost the election, in some of the states that made a real difference. I realize that some in the party have gotten crazy with social issues for you guys. I realize that you are tired of sending these people to Washington only to be disappointed when they don’t say what they’re going to do. But you can’t change anything from the outside, Gov. Johnson. You can only change things from the inside. Things are changing. Younger conservatives think differently than our elders on a lot of issues and while we’d still might have differences about abortion, many of us (more than you would think) would agree with you on marriage equality, while we may disagree on ending the way on drugs, we might be open to keeping on eye on Washington and Colorado to see how marijuana legalization works out there to see if we can work out something here.

Unless there’s a complete and total collapse of the Republican Party (which I wouldn’t rule out), the Libertarian Party isn’t going anywhere. So here’s what I’m proposing. If we can promise to be serious about fiscal issues and at least listen and have a debate with you on social issues, would you consider joining us to make sure that the Democratic Party doesn’t have a huge foothold on things again? We could use your commitment to these most important issues, the stuff government actually can affect, we could use the enthusiasm (and more importantly, the youth) of the libertarian movement. Join with us in coalition, let’s take out the blight that is liberal statism on this country! You can only change something from the inside!

Thank you Governor! And best of luck to you in your future endeavors!

And in a way, they’re right.

I keep hearing that Republicans lost with moderates in 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012. But we lost in 2000 and 2004 as well. President Bush supported the most massive expansion of government since LBJ with his prescription drug program. He and the congressional Republicans started this binge of spending that continued into the first two years of the Obama presidency.

Bush and the establishment of the GOP are very much responsible for where we are today. Let’s not make the mistake of rolling over for their candidates again.

While I was anticipating a close Romney win, there are some real short term and long term problems we’re facing in the Republican Party that we’ve got to address if we’re ever going to have a hope of winning elections, I’ll talk about short term and long term issues and a basic solution that would fix them.

Short Term

Turn Out

Memo to establishment Republicans: we have tried wishy washy middle of the road jelly spined Republicans in the last 7 times and our record 3-4. One of those wins was off the coat tails of a conservative icon and the other two wins was because the candidate positioned himself as a conservative. That is the electoral record, we won’t get into the governing record which is quite atrocious. What gets Republicans excited is vision, the leadership in Washington offered nothing compelling in 2010, but we had great candidates who went out there and got people excited about conservative ideas. This is what wins elections. I liked Mitt Romney by the end of the election, I think he is a good man, he seems like he has a stellar record of management and turning things around, but I was never terribly excited about him. And I suspect a large swath of the conservative wing of the party was more excited about getting rid of Barack Obama than they were about making Obama President, as McCain’s turn out in 2008 was better than Romney’s in 2012.

Smart Politics

“Thank you for coming today Mr. President.” those where the words that should have come out of Chris Christie’s mouth, nothing more, nothing less. I understand that playing politics after a storm is a little bit crass, but the effusive praise Gov. Christie gave to President Obama was over the top considering an election was coming up in a few short days.

Why Governor Romney chose not to attack President Obama over Benghazi I will never know, but there you go… America has just re-elected a president embroiled in a scandal Sen. John McCain and many other believe is worse than Watergate.

The Issues

Many people said President Obama didn’t offer a plan to run on and made the election about small issues, but who’s fault is that? If Mitt Romney hds been both more specific and more direct about his plans, he would have been the one framing the issues since President Obama had chosen not to have a second term agenda. Laugh at Herman Cain all you want, but 9-9-9 got America talking about the silliness of our tax code and what we need to do to replace it. Gov. Romney played right into President Obama’s hand, making him the boogie man for African Americans (“he wants to take us back to Jim Crow!”), women (“he hates our lady parts!”), and Hispanics (“he doesn’t like us”), they all turned out in higher numbers than expected, now here we are.

Long Term

Education and Perception

Republicans have allowed conservatism to be pained as some sort of racist, sexist, homophobic neo-confederate movement. After 8 years of Bush, with a large swath of the electorate unaware of Ronald Reagan (someone who is 32 this years was born the year Reagan was elected) people aren’t exactly sure what conservatism is and what we stand for. We need to confront the Republican Party – either we’re a coalition of right-leaning, conservative, and libertarian voters committed to shrinking the size of the federal government or we just need to make the Republican Party go away and start something new.  We need to remain true to our conservative principles, while rebranding ourselves for the 21st century (for example, instead of small vs. big government, simple vs. complicated government. People love simplicity, if we can explain that conservatism is simple and liberalism is complicated, it will appeal more to younger voters who have chosen Apple products over PC products.) We need new conservative voters in the Republican Party. And I hope to God we decide we will reject Sen. Rick Santorum’s admonition to purge Libertarians from our ranks. First of all, libertarians and conservatives are in alignment almost 80% of the time. We need to strengthen our connection with them.

Urbanization

Why do we automatically concede California and New York election cycle after election cycle? These two states have large conservative populations that live outside the cities that make them Democrat. The reason is we’ve rejected the cities in the Republican Party, we need to urbanize our party a little bit. We do that by building stronger operations in the cities, and educating people about conservatism. We also need to take a look at our approach. Calling the country “real America” while rejecting the cities is probably not a good idea, we don’t draw lines between people, that’s what the Democrats do, we are The United States of America. That’s what we need to stand for. A partnership with libertarians could help us out with people in the cities as well as younger voters.

Diversification

The great thing is the conservative wing of our party is diverse and getting more diverse. Had we had a better night, Mia Love would have probably become the first African American Republican Congresswoman ever. It’s great that the conservative wing of the party is where we see diversity, but it’s got to translate into some inroads with the voters. President Obama will not be the nominee next time around – but African Americans will still likely overwhelmingly support the Democratic candidate in 2016. We should start a 20-40-50 plan. That is make it a goal that by 2016 we get 20% of the black vote, 40% of the Hispanic vote and 50% of other minority groups. We would do this not by pandering, but explaining how liberalism has failed them and how conservatism can help them and we would put people they can relate to — Love, Allen West, (even though they lost), Marco Rubio, Suzanna Martinez, Nikki Haley, etc. out in the front explaining these policies.

All in all – it’s a bummer, but it was to be expected. Romney had one good debate, he didn’t really have a plan, and didn’t run a good campaign. It’s over. Onward and Upward, let’s hope the GOP gets the message this time.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy films put out by groups like Citizens United. I am looking forward to seeing “2016: Obama’s America” but we’ve got to face it: those films are being marketed towards a conservative audience, they’re going to be seen almost exclusively by conservatives, and their content is pretty straight-fowardly conservative. We’re not making any converts with these films, and I don’t think that’s their goal, we’re merely equipping conservatives with facts so they can go and fight the good fight.

But we need films, television shows, books, and other forms of entertainment that argue conservative free-market principles in a way that is digestible to the general public and that is going to be seen beyond the 20% of the country that are true-believer, committed, conservatives (way more of the country than that are conservatives, that’s just my guestimate on how much of the country actually pays attention.) Above all else, we need entertainment with conservative principles that actually entertains audiences.

“The Dark Knight Rises” Christopher Nolan’s latest entry into the enduring Batman franchise tackles leftist memes head on. Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman to general audiences, played spectacularly by Anne Hathaway, starts off as a light antagonist, someone who has stolen Bruce Wayne’s finger prints and given them to one of his business rivals. Toward the beginning of the film, Ms. Kyle let’s Wayne know that there’s a storm coming and that the rich better get ready because the days of living fat and happy are over. Through the film she goes through a beautiful evolution, realizing that those “fat cats” have families and that their quest for equality has put people out of their homes and taken lives. She teams up with Batman to stop the main antagonist in the film, Bane, who leads a marxist, left wing-style revolution.

Leftist critics, even those who enjoyed the film and gave it positive reviews have complained about the films politics, saying movements like Occupy would never drag people out of their homes. There’s one problem: Writer/Director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan wrote this script a whole year before the Occupy movement started. Any parallels to the Occupy movement are mere coincidence and perhaps if the movement portrayed by the film irks left wing critics and immediately reminds them of Occupy, maybe it’s saying something about it that makes them uncomfortable? Team Nolan were inspired by the French Revolution, which was a pre-cursor to the modern left wing movements of the 20th century.

But the fact that the film forces people to think about the themes in the film and what’s happening is exactly what we need in the conservative movement. We need people who are comfortable with art, we need people who are comfortable with the mainstream. Andrew Breitbart once said that pop-culture is upstream from politics. The Dark Knight Rises is a gigantic leap in the right direction, we just need to keep plowing ahead.

I have not been a fan of Mitt Romney to say the least, but his campaign’s response to the attacks on his incredible wife, lead by Mrs Romney herself, has been fantastic and has made me way more optimistic about our chances in November.

While I am not a professional political professional by any stretch, my reccomendation to the Romney campaign would be this: with an improving economy, exploit your wealth. The message should be “I owe my wealth and prosperity to the American dream, I have been able to help people create wealth and prosperity with their families and I know what it takes to create an environment that can help you create wealth and prosperity for your families.” We may never be as wealthy as Mitt Romney, but I think every American would like to prosper whatever that looks like for them. 

Romney can point out he represents the ideal of what America is all about. President Obama on the other hand wants to punish success, punish prosperity, punish wealth. 

My hunch is, based on their response to Rosengate, some variation of what I have posted is what the Romney campaign will put out.

I sensed no political bend in this film. One of the kids highlighted is a lesbian, but all she was really pushing for in the film is to be respected as a human being and some of her experiences she describes would, I hope, make the most ardent social conservative cringe at the behavior of some of the people in her world. I don’t think anyone would approve of the way she was described being treated in the film. Overall the films message was to kids to take a stand for kids being bullied and I really hope the MPAA allow it to be PG-13 or the director edits some of the language out, because I think it’s very important for kids to see – because of the culture we live in, what we say to people can have a real serious effect on them. And it’s important to treat everyone with respect and stand up for people who are being cruelly teased. That is the only real “prescription” the film provides, but there are some real problems it revealed that will be of no surprise to conservatives:

1) Our highly federalized centralized education system instills the idea that parents subjects rather than partners in creating a safe environments for our kids. One of the essential reasons I support more local control over education is that it gets the parents more involved in the decision making for creating a safe and flourishing learning environment for our kids. There’s a scene in the film where parents of a child interviewed for the film are shown the footage the director has compiled of their son because the director feared for the child’s safety. The parents meet with the principle who informs them that he can change bus routes, but can’t guarantee the children on the bus will behave. The parent brings up the fact that when she was a kid there was little stopping the bus driver pulling over until kids behaved themselves and sat down. The principle then told the parents that she had taken a ride on the route their son was on and that the kids where behaved on it.

2) Administrative officials seem more interested in CYA on their own part, than taking responsibility for their kids. Between this film and “Waiting for Superman” I’m seeing that a lot of the problem in schools aren’t teachers – it’s the union bosses and the lazy administrations in schools. When the Principal asked a Vice Principal to investigate the situation above, the VP interviewed various students, including the student who’s parents complained. The bullied student mentioned that he did not let authority figures know because nothing was done previously when a bully lifted a seat cushion put the kid’s head underneath it and sat on the cushion. The VP proceeded to defend herself rather pathetically and asked the bullied kid if the bully ever did that exact thing ever to him again. The kid responded, “Yeah, but he did other stuff.” The parents of that school system should be able to work with the school system to make sure discipline policies are in place that protect their kids from behavior like that.But I can see how difficult that is with lazy self-serving administrative officials like that.

2) The “Self-Esteem” project of the last forty years has failed miserably. I’m 25, so I don’t know for sure, but something tells me kids were not killing themselves after being bullied 25, 30, 40 years ago. Every kid through the ages struggles at some point or another with insecurity. It’s apart of life, everyone goes through it. I remember insecure times in my life as a kid (and now as a young adult trying to find a way to make it, I’m having to work through some insecurity as well). Liberals believe the answer to insecurity is “feeling good” or “self-esteem” In the midst of failure tell your kid how great they are, the theory goes, and they’ll be awesome. The problem with this is that it ignores reality and truth because the truth is, being a last place baseball team is a failure on behalf of the the team of kids – but it should not and does not define their worth. Those kids may not be good at baseball, but they’re probably good at other things. “Self-esteem” sends kids running off focusing on things that just waste their time rather than helping kids find their life’s purpose and what they are good at. The anecdote to insecurity is security. It’s instilling real confidence in the kid in who they are. It’s really challenging to do as a parent, or pastor, or teacher, but it’s worth it. There are too many kids, and it’s not their fault by the way, it’s our culture’s, who welt away at any sort of criticism. It’s up to parents and the adults kids have in their lives to instill that security that prevents terrible things from happening.

Any thoughts on this subject? I highly recommend seeing the film, prepare to be heartbroken as you’ll hear testimonies from parents who’s children have committed suicide and see some really sweet kids being absolutely tortured at schools. They deserve a better culture and a better outlook on life  than the one we’ve allowed to be given to them.

Rick Santorum is not a conservative.

He’s voted time and time again for stupid policies like No Child Left Behind and the Prescription Drug Benefit (which, to my amazement, Newt continues to support.) His excuse of “getting behind the leader” doesn’t fly. A real true conservative leader would have stood up to dumb policies like that…. or Romney’s Health Care Bill.

Which is why it makes me absolutely sick that I might actually have to pull the trigger for Romney in June when California finally gets to vote. Why am I choosing Romney over Santorum?

Because while Romney is also quite liberal for a Republican, he’s not running around telling people he’s a conservative like Santorum is. When Bush, another liberal Republican, went around telling people he was a conservative it gave people the wrong impression about what conservatism is. Our conservative forefathers, Coolidge, Taft, Goldwater, and Reagan would barf if someone told them that the 2000′s administration and government was supposedly “conservative” with it’s record levels of spending, unbelievable new entitlements, unmanageable federal regulations and mandates, and the list goes on and on. Rick Santorum was a leader in the senate, he dutifully got in line, and like Bush, he’ll use his social stances, which are becoming less and less popular as the days go on, to claim he’s a conservative.

If Santorum wins the nomination and becomes president, the conservative movement is badly badly damaged. We need a true fiscal and defense conservative leader to represent conservative ideals and more importantly teach a generation that is increasingly anti-traditionalist about conservative values. The man to do that is not Rick Santorum. It’s not Mitt Romney either, but he’s not going to damage the conservative brand by trying to claim it as his own.

I know Gingrich isn’t going to win the nomination. I’m still voting for him out of principle, but if you want him to drop out, I’m going to vote for Romney and I’m sure I’m not alone.

There is no doubt in my mind that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin struggled when she was chosen to be Senator John McCain’s running mate. That is not to say that, as the new HBO film “Game Change” strongly implies, that Gov. Palin is dumb. But as her released emails show, she was so dedicated to being a good governor in a remote state  that being plucked from relative obscurity, she was not really properly prepared on the national scene. The sourced book “Sarah from Alaska” spells all of this out in detail. There were some scenes in the film “Game Change”, which was based on another book, that were familiar from “Sarah from Alaska,” like the dysfunctional campaign staff, which comes off as disorganized and haphazard. The authors Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe (both of whom frequently receive seemingly Palin approved leaks) deliver the good, bad, and the ugly of Palin. They report that she was woefully unprepared to be Vice President, but also point out that considering her circumstance, she was quick on her feet and smart in picking things up while it was really the McCain campaign that screwed things up. They also report on Palin’s magnificent career as Governor of Alaska, which I suppose you can’t expect HBO to include in a two hour narrative they’re trying to control. After all, the accounts of disgruntled screw-up staffers including Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace were far too juicy and more in line with the left’s view of Palin than the truth.

The real weakness of this film is the performance from Julianne Moore. While Ed Harris’ McCain rings true, as does Woody Harrelson’s Steve Schmidt, The same can’t be said of Julianne Moore’s portrayal of Palin. The film cuts to a Tina Fey parody and one can’t help but think that Moore is doing a parody of Fey doing a parody of Palin. It’s the left’s vision of Palin in full force: dim-witted and eeeevil. The problem with the Palin performance is that this is a film about her written from everyone else’s point of view. “The Iron Lady” which I saw late last year had a left-of-center bend in it’s story telling, the difference between that and this is that Meryl Streep and the film makers did their best to understand Thatcher, her motivations, and her core. Streep’s Oscar was, in my mind, well deserved as she elevated what would have otherwise been a left-wing hit job into a tour de force performance by literally inhabiting Thatcher. The writing, direction, and acting by Moore all sort of poke fun at Palin and never try to figure her out. Moore’s Palin is manipulative, spiteful, childish and nasty in this film. In “The Iron Lady” Steep’s Thatcher was portrayed as stern and harsh because she is a woman running what had been a man’s world. If Steep’s Thatcher is Shylock, a backhanded sympathetic portrayal of an enemy from the author’s point of view, Moore’s Palin is The Joker, an evil, pathetic sort of villain. The film depicts her being mentally unstable, bipolar and double minded. There are a few scenes showing Palin as a “loving mother” but it’s a bone thrown that has been overstated in reviews for the film. In one scene, Palin refuses to prep for her interview with Katie Couric, telling aide Nicolle Wallace she wanted to focus on Alaska. Then moments later she whisper’s in Schmidt’s ear “I so don’t want to go back to Alaska.”  While Palin was certainly under prepared, The film shows her to be ignorant of the fact that the Queen has no direct say in governing the United Kingdom, yet during the 2008 election Gov. Palin cited Margaret Thatcher as an influence for running for office. The film also shows McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann giving Palin a middle school history lesson on the World Wars, Palin scribbling the information down on note cards. Scheunemann discredits the scene saying that his conversations with Governor Palin where much deeper than that and were more about aligning her foreign policy views with those of McCain’s. Again, no one is denying that Palin needed more preparation but the film just takes it to a level that is not even recognizable, that is a sick parody of Palin rather than a balanced interpretation of events.

This is a film made by people who view the heartland and conservative territory as alien. As we’re frequently reminded through the film. A chief example of this is the Charlie Gibson-Katie Couric interview debacles. Nicolle Wallace made a huge strategic blunder by putting an unprepared VP candidate in front of two journalists who, especially in the case of Couric, lean left. There was so much interest in Palin that had she been interviewed by anyone, people would have watched. Why not put her in front of Sean Hannity to start with?  But Wallace comes off as the level headed principled one telling an irritated Palin who says she knows what Hillary was going through that “yeah, you’re just like Hillary.” All of the scenes depicting crowds at McCain-Palin events bring out the conservative stereotypes. I remember going to a Palin event during the election and seeing some of those people – trucker hats and plaid shirts. But there were also Latinos, Asians at my event in Southern California, I was standing next to a African American family holding a Palin sign. They continue the “kill him” lie. Again conservatives are portrayed as “the others.” McCain’s campaign staff can’t believe all of the yahoos, while Palin blends in with them just fine.

The film’s moments are few and far between. Again, Palin is showed as a loving mother but very briefly. The media is also skewered. Schmidt is shown answering some of the more ridiculous questions from the press corp.

It doesn’t surprise me that “Game Change” is getting rave reviews because it’s nothing but two hours of leftist political porn. It does not challenge their point of view or make them think in any meaningful way, it is a two hour film designed to be a punching bag for frustrated leftists who hate Sarah Palin. If you’re looking for substantive film about Sarah Palin, you won’t get it here. The film makers could have adapted “Sarah from Alaska” and they would have gotten the “moments” they were looking for, but from a well sourced, truthful book. Instead they chose to adapt 40 pages from an unsourced book. What a shame, the real story behind Governor Palin is quite a remarkable one.

That being said, there is a tendency for those close to Palin to try and shield her. Look, I love Governor Palin, had she run for president I would have been behind her, but she didn’t have the best VP run, she was plucked from obscurity and was clearly learning national politics on the spot.

If you want a fair picture of Sarah Palin written with accounts from people who were with her and were willing to go on the record, read “Sarah from Alaska” by Scott Conroy and Shushanah Walshe. Like any great bio, it doesn’t always paint the subject in the most favorable light (read “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson and see what you think about the late Apple founder personally afterwards), but it is fair and it does leave you with the impression that while she may have been unprepared Palin is a very smart person and an incredibly savvy politician. It’s a fair take and I think it’s the reason the Palin camp leaks info to Walshe and Conroy.

Read that book rather than waste your time with that movie.