We, the undersigned Senators, recognize that the Constitution authorizes the president to appoint Supreme Court justices, and gives the Senate the right to “advise and consent” in confirming said justices.  As such, ideally, the only qualifications that would be appropriate for the Senate to examine, in a Supreme Court Nominee, would be whether or not he or she is capable of doing the job of being a Supreme Court Justice.

However, it has been our experience that Republican presidents nominees are not accorded this deference, and are instead asked pointed questions about how they would decide a given court case, or whether or not they believe certain cases decided by the court in the past, were decided correctly.  This has created a situation where the nominees of Republican Presidents are evaluated based on their political views and with an eye specifically to the results in terms of decisions, of allowing them to serve on the US Supreme Court.  Obviously, this situation is untenable going forward, as deference to one party but not the other leads to a preponderence of justices with approval from one party, but not the other.

Diversity is often held up as being a positive thing for our government, our culture, and the US Supreme Court.  And yet, in just the recent past we have seen that judges appointed even to just Federal Appellate court positions have been blocked, held, or obstructed simply due to a partisan evaluation of their political views.

Therefore, we have agreed to the following:  We will object to the political views of Democrat appointees, we will block their nominations, hold their appointments, and obstruct their progress until such time as our Democratic fellows in the Senate demonstrate appropriate deference and respect for the president’s authority to appoint and nominate those whom he wishes to serve, and such time as our Democrat fellows in the Senate demonstrate plainly that they do not merely object to Republican appointees out of spite, political disagreement, or out of concern that said appointees will reach decisions that our Democratic fellows disagree with.

How hard is that?  Why cower away from coming out and letting the Democrats know that if they want to be jackasses, we’ll be jackasses back, but only as long as they do it?  You have to know what the rules are in order to know that you’ve broken them, right?  So the Democrats either don’t know the rules, and need to be educated, or they break the rules knowingly and Republicans need to let them know that it’ll be tit for tat until they come back into the fold.

First of all, I think it’s a bad sign for our country that even among a conservative voting base such as that in South Carolina, probably 25-33% of the questions that Senator DeMint fielded were along the lines of “My spouse lost his/her job and we’re poor now and have this other problem that we didn’t expect and how can you help us?”  Granted, the government offers numerous assistance programs and it’s appropriate for people to request help in navigating the ridiculous bureaucracy that is our nations federal government, but seriously!  Do you WANT everyone else to know (there was an average of 5000 or so people on the call) that you have problems and are throwing yourself abjectly at the feet of the government hoping for assistance?  This issue had me gnashing my teeth and pulling my hair.

Now, Senator DeMint did not belittle these people, and pointed out that there are some obligations that the government has incurred with respect to some of these people, and that those obligations need to be honored.  Sometimes it does take a Senators staff to make things happen, but that, in my eyes is just a sign of how corrupted our government and our society has become.

Senator DeMint addressed numerous issues relating to the stimulus bill, the IMF bailout, and the nomination of Judge Sotomayor.  He pointed out that the stimulus bill was bad for the nation, that the IMF bailout was a terrible thing, and that the Democrats frequently put things like that into “good” bills as amendments in order to make it politically unpalatable for Republicans to vote against them.  He said that he asked Judge Sotomayor about when she thought life began and when the government should begin to protect life (I don’t think that was the exact formulation of his question, but it addresses the heart of the subject).  According to Senator DeMint, Judge Sotomayor responded that she “hadn’t put any thought into it.”

He affirmed that life begins at conception, and that the government should feel obligated to protect the lives of its citizens from that moment forward.  He did not address Judge Sotomayors nomination any further at that time.

In addition, there were several polls conducted during the course of the call, including “does the federal government spend too much?” and “Should the government have more control over health care?” as well as at least one more that I can’t recall off the top of my head.

He talked for a while about the health care proposal by the current administration, and why it’s a bad thing.  He actually used direct quotes from the Redstate posts of the past few days, including pointing out how many uninsured people would be covered by the changes in health care, and how we could provide them all with direct BCBS coverage for less than the changes are expected to cost.
All in all, it was a great experience, and I hope I get another chance to participate again.  I never had an opportunity to ask any questions (mostly because I couldn’t think of any really good ones).  I thought briefly about asking if Senator DeMint would be willing to be cloned 534 times in order to ensure that we had a decent congress, but decided against it.

Today’s Republicans are media-whipped.  The media has what they want, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it.  The Republicans in office want publicity and reassurance that they aren’t such bad guys, and they think the best way to get it is to suck up to the liberal media and do whatever it takes.

This is why we see Republicans in office sucking up to the media, trying to do what they think the MSM wants them to do, rather than caring about what the conservative base wants or thinks.  Why?  Because our office-holding Republicans think that the media offer them the easy way to get re-elected and hold on to power.

That’s all.  I just thought since I came up with the right way to express our feelings about the current Republican party leadership, I should share the expression with you.  Enjoy!

I was forwarded a request from the Republican National Committee from someone who was being asked to be a surrogate for the RNC on the Supreme Court pick — that is, talk on TV and radio on behalf of the RNC. The request included the guidance that the RNC is “looking to come out very neutral on the subject.”

It seems evident that the Republican National Committee does not share the concern of many of its members that appointing liberals to the Supreme Court is a Bad Thing(TM).

I find it hard to support that.

Well, what is a Social Conservative?  How do you identify these people who are refusing to compromise with the rest of the Republican party?  I ask not merely out of whimsy, but because knowing the answer will enable Social Conservatives (amongst whom I count myself) to self-identify, and to clearly delineate who is, and who is not, deserving of the title.
So I figure, there’s probably 10 or 20 good platform positions that make a real social conservative, and if you’re on board with 80% of them, you probably qualify.  After all, to keep the post white, you have to re-paint it every year, so if you’re on board with 80% of the positions, you’ll probably not have deal-breaking objections to the other 20%.  But lets see how this goes.

1) Opposition to government subsidized abortion.  Abortion in and of itself is murder (believes the social conservative), but each of us is responsible for his or her own actions.  But having the government support this is beyond the pale.

2) Opposition to gay marriage.  Our society has endured this long because of traditional societal institutions that we value.  Just because we don’t remember WHY they are valuable, does not mean they are not worth keeping.  Opposition to polygamy would fall under this category as well.  Some social conservatives would oppose “no-fault” divorce laws, but I don’t think that warrants a separate bullet-point.

3) A desire to see entitlement spending by government reduced (ie, welfare, WIC, AFDC, etc), not out of fiscal restraint, but because goverment handouts rob people of their own pride and motivation to succeed or fail on their own.  “The character of America is that every man can make himself.”  Not that the government will take care of you if you make a mess of yourself.

4) A desire to allow free expression of faith in public places, including government buildings and property.  IE, 10 commandments?  Okay.  Prayer in schools?  Okay.  Wiccan gatherings in State parks? Okay by me.

5) A desire to see our borders secured effectively by the government.  The govt. does many things it should not, and even more things it need not.  And it doesn’t do what it should, which is ensure that our borders are secure.  Socially, this encourages respect for the law.  (This point would also be a national security issue for NatSec Cons)  Included in this point would be opposition to Amnesty for illegals currently in-country.

6) Strong support for minimal government regulation.   How much is too much?  Just to propose a rough, silly standard, I’d say that if you can’t print all the regulations that affect your workplace on 150 single-spaced, size 14 Times New Roman font, double-sided pages, then you’re over-regulated.  Thinking “nuclear power plants” = 150 pages, personally.  (I expect that’s really extreme on my part, but it does no good to say “minimal government regulation” if you can’t define what those words mean.  Without definitions, I’m as bad as a democrat and just using weasel words)

7) Support pushing education-system evaluations to the lowest possible level.  Instead of having the stupid Department of Education in DC evaluate my kids school, I think **I** should be the one to evaluate their school.

Support for the death penalty as a method of retributive and preventative justice, when applied after thorough and fair review.

9) A Strong desire to see the flag respected and to honor our Armed forces.

10) opposition to legalization of any currently illegal drugs.

11) opposition to legalization of child pornography, prostitution and to explicit sex on broadcast TV.

12) support for tort-reform, if couched in terms of “reducing the sue-happy nature of our modern culture.”

Unfortunately, those are all I can think of so far.  I feel confident there would be at least 20 points, but it’s quite possible that the points outlined above wouldn’t qualify.  I’m interested in your thoughts on the matter, and any points you may have to add.

Well.  I have taken to listening to NPR in the mornings because I have the following choices for radio on my way to work:  lousy current popular music channel, lousy 80’s music local channel (not that 80’s music is lousy, far from it, but they choose to play the LOUSIEST SONGS), boring local conservative talk radio, “Jesus is my boyfriend” contemporary Christian music, or NPR.

Only one of those stations is going to provide me with any REAL news.  And, unfortunately, it’s NOT the local conservative talk radio station.  So, as I drive to work, listening to NPR, I realize:  Conservatives could do this too, and do it better.

NPR has the following format (approximately) for its news programs:  a brief, 3 to 5 sentence off-the-wall storyline that they picked up from Drudge or Fark, followed by about 90 seconds of more general national news.  Then, they move on to a story, which will consist of 1-to-6-minutes of actual reporting;  contributors from all over the planet will be interviewed, send in their stories, whatever.  And you can definitely learn things from listening to NPR.
But, of course, the problem is, each and every person contributing to NPR’s programs is a liberal.  Each and every program host asking questions of the guests is a liberal.  Rare indeed is the day when a conservative is even a guest, and then they get asked tough questions (fair enough), and their responses are frequently edited to fit into the “remaining time.”

What would “Conservative NPR” look like?  It would have this same format, play Limbaugh and other nationally syndicated talk shows during the mid-day hours (when NPR is playing opera and classical concertos), and would provide other talk programs at night.  And during the drive-time hours, when NPR is doing their “All Things Considered” and “The World” or “MarketWatch” segments, the conservative NPR would do similar programs, with one twist:  Ask tough questions.  Dig for challenging answers.  Look past the simple, easy responses of a government flunky or a liberal college professor, and ask probing questions.

FoxNews tries hard, but their approach to “Fair And Balanced” is to put everyone, liberals, libertarians, and conservatives, on-screen at once and let them all shout at each other.  That doesn’t work, because conservatives, despite what liberals claim, tend to be more polite.  Liberals tend to be willing to lie, to repeat stupid sound-bites, and to shout over other people just in order to dominate the conversation.  People accuse Michael Savage of being rude to his callers, but I see much much worse from liberals on FoxNews at least once a week.

Instead of the FoxNews approach, take the NPR approach: ask the tough questions yourself.  Get a list of questions from conservative thinkers who are strong on the subject, and be prepared to challenge your liberal interlocutor on the issue.  Then, (because you KNOW that NPR programs aren’t live, right?) cut and paste with your ProTools or SoundForge and create a nicely packaged radio program that cuts out the incivility and the shouting and just gets across the conservative viewpoint and the fact that the liberal guest has no legitimate response to whatever you asked him (or her).

I’d love to see this take root.  Would it be tough?  Yes.  Would liberals decry it as being unfair to the guests and propaganda?  DUH.  Would it find support among conservatives?  You tell me.

So, despite, or perhaps because of, the rational thinking behind (most of) the posts at Powerline, I find that they miss some very important information.

Take, for example, the post written late yesterday, about the Obama DoJ pursuing John Yoo and Jay Bybee (see the post here).  John adds as an afterthought to the post:

The Democrats would do well to bear in mind that they will not be in power forever, and the ones who are in power after them will be Republicans. One might think that impulses of justice, combined with prudence, would restrain the Democrats. In doing so, one would overrate the Democrats on both counts.

Clearly, John doesn’t understand Democrats or our current political situation.  There is literally nothing to prevent Democrats from continuing along this line of behavior.  He alleges that someday, Republicans will be back in power, implying that the Republicans might possibly abuse their political offices in the same way.  Evidently John forgets that the MSM provides cover for Democrats and excoriates Republicans, even when both parties behave in exactly the same manner.

In short, Democrats are finally coming to realize that, just like Iran, they can do whatever they want, and the opposition will make noises about possibly taking action, but no such action will ever be forthcoming.  Expect to see more, and more egregious, abuses of political office by Democrats in the future, and expect to see Republicans who commit similar abuses to be politically drawn and quartered, and buried career-wise.  It absolutely stuns me that the gentlemen at Powerline, normally so thoughtful, do not recognize this.

Where does the Republican party need to go from here, though?  Well, I don’t have THE answer, all I have is AN answer.  When you’re in a spot like this, where you can’t do what your opponent does (because of personal ethics or because that option simply isn’t on the table), and you’re getting hammered because you’re outmatched, the only thing you can do is change the fundamental rules of the game.  Look at the basic assumptions you’ve made about how the game is played, and figure out where you can change things.  Don’t expect that making such a change will automatically give you the win, but recognize that you HAVE to change the situation in order to even have a chance.

Republicans, if they want to get back to winning politically, will have to do something that seems out of bounds.  They will have to straight up invest in a media organization, or get  more disciplined at distributing talking points to candidates and officials, or SOMEthing.  Hey, if I had the answer, I wouldn’t be doing what I do, I’d be a political advisor.