When Warren Buffett said in 2011 that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, all hell broke loose. And when Mitt Romney recently said that he paid a 15% tax rate on his income, the same hell broke loose and he was surely talking about the same thing.

Because Buffett was referring to the 15% that Romney was, and that is a completely different tax (a capital gains tax) than what most people pay (which is a personal income tax) or what Buffett or Romney originally paid on their business income (a corporate income tax or business income tax).

That 15% is called a ‘capital gains tax rate’. You certainly have heard the phrase. It works like this:

It has been revealed that Romney had taxable income of $21.7 million in 2010. And when you compare it to Bill Gates’ fortune of roughly $45 billion, then there is a big difference. Thus Romney is a piker in comparison; his whole fortune is estimated at around $270 million. Yet if Gates ran for president the Democrats would make every excuse for his money because he supports Obama.

Romney earned $21.7 million on his “investments” in 2010. And on that $21.7 million he paid about a 15%’capital gains tax’ or about $3 million in federal taxes.

The “investments” that produced the $21.7 million refer to Romney’s “personal fortune” of $270 million. And this fortune came after he and his firm paid huge amounts of taxes, salaries, benefits etc. over several decades on much higher ‘gross revenues’ (probably in the billions) from his successful company Bain Capital, leaving Romney with his cumulative personal wealth of $270 million.

In other words, his “investments” or his “net worth” or “personal wealth” is money left over from all of his business activities, i.e., it is Romney’s “profit” from his decades in business.

Romney’s income in 2010 of $21.7 million was about 8% of his $270 million personal fortune or his “nest egg”. And that $270 million is invested in various investment accounts to provide him an annual income stream – it is invested in stock portfolios, bank accounts, bonds, real estate interests etc.

Of course liberals like to say that that $270 million is under Romney’s mattress and that he is using it only to buy jewelry and caviar for his wife.

But that is nonsense. This $270 million is ‘investment capital’ that is doing positive things like helping companies to start up or to grow and prosper and provide jobs. That is why it is best kept away from the government.

If there were no investment capital, the economy would collapse. Because most people who want to start or expand a company, from Steve Jobs to the guy on the corner with a convenience store, eventually need investment capital to buy tools or machinery or inventory, or to build a factory or a store etc.

They take out a loan and hope that their company does well enough to pay the loan back and then make a profit. Or they issue stock in their company which is purchased by people like Mitt Romney in big quantities, or by your neighbor in smaller quantities.

And saying that Romney’s personal fortune is simply funding his exorbitant lifestyle is like saying that your life’s saving are being used to fund your exorbitant lifestyle when actually your bank account (your deposit in the bank like your life’s savings) is being lent out by the bank for people to buy houses or start businesses, i.e, to grow the economy. And the bank makes a profit on that loan (interest on the loan) and some of that profit is turned over to you as interest on your bank account.

So your bank account or Romney’s bank account and other investments are earning income (interest, dividends, profits etc.) because they are invested in productive economic growth.

And thus if the government takes that money away like communism does and like Democrats want to, then there is no investment capital and the economy collapses. That is why socialist nations always have poor growth stats and communist nations are always destitute.

So the ‘capital gains tax’ is a second tax on income. And liberals favor it  because Romney made the ‘capital gains’ on his “investments” without going out and working for it every day and so, in their view, he must be punished.

Indeed since Romney does not go to the office every day but lives off of his investments then his income is not taxed as ‘personal income’ but as ‘capital gains’. That is why Romney is taxed at 15% which is the capital gains tax rate.

And this is precisely what tens of millions of retirees in the middle class do every year in their retirements – they live off of their investments.

By the way, Romney also gave almost 14% of his $21.7 million annual income to charity in 2010 or almost $3 MILLION, while vice president Joe Biden gave .3% (that’s three tenths of one percent…) of his income to charity annually during the last ten years of his US Senate career ($369 a year average). In 2010, Biden gave only 1.4% to charity, or one-tenth of what Romney gave. While the Democrats portray Romney as a selfish businessman.

Thus if Warren Buffett’s secretary indeed paid, say, a 16% tax rate on her personal income (the Buffett story is a huge distortion of the facts made up for public consumption) then she would technically pay more than his capital gains tax rate. But remember that his capital gains rate is a second tax on his income, not his primary tax.

So if for instance you are a doctor and you make $200,000 a year, you would be in the top personal income tax bracket which is a 35% tax rate (the top personal rate and the top corporate/business rate just happen to be the same right now at 35%. But this has not always been true by any means.).

But after deductions, you might pay a 27% federal tax rate. Obama paid 26% on his 2011 return, even though he was in the 35% personal income bracket. Because he had deductions and took every one of them even though he and all his rich Democrat friends always say they don’t need any breaks. But Obama took them anyway like all his cronies do.

And after all your doctor taxes are paid and you’ve paid for your house and your kids’ education and cars and groceries and everything else, you might put some leftover money like $30,000 in a certificate of deposit or buy stocks with it and do the same thing every year to build up your “nest egg”.

So while you paid 27% on your original income, you will pay 15% on the annual income stream from your “nest egg” in that same year. This is your 15% ‘capital gains tax’. It is separate and second tax from your income tax or your Social Security or Medicare tax or any other tax.

But the media are making it look like Romney is a skinflint for paying 15% when millions of people, particularly retirees, do the same thing. But the more the hyperactive media attack Romney now, the less impact their attacks will have closer to the election if he is the nominee. So let them attack him and get it over with.

Many of us believe that the capital gains rate should be zero, that you should not have to pay a second tax on your success. This may be in the future. It will greatly help our economy to make it zero. Because a low-tax economy always produces more wealth and jobs than a high-tax economy. History has proven this over and over.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

(Here are excerpts from the State of the Union speech, with my comments after each.)

Obama said: Most of Al Qaida’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken. And some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home. These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s armed forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. Comment: Yes, indeed. Because it is the military, the institution that Democrats hate most. The institutions of government that have let us down are Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the rest of the Democrat-built bureaucracy.

Obama said: We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by, or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. Comment: OK, here it comes. Get out the violins. And don’t you think he might avoid the words “fair shot” when Gabrielle Giffords is in the audience? How about “fair chance”? And this idea that everyone should play by the same rules is more Democrat hypocrisy. So Mr. President, when will all those poor people start paying taxes instead of sucking the economy dry?

Obama said: In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them. Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money. Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior. Comment: Yes, loans that banks were forced to make by Democrat government plan. And Republicans tried to rein in Fannie and Freddie. Regulators didn’t look the other way, however. They were stripped of their power by votes made by Obama himself along with his fellow Democrats.

Obama said: On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number-one automaker. Comment: Obama’s union buddies had ruined Chrysler and GM in the first place! And now they owe the taxpayers billions that they will never pay back. Meanwhile Obama gave large parts of those two companies over to the same unions.

Obama said: What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh. We can’t bring every job back that’s left our shore. Comment: It won’t happen if Obama’s union cronies organize the labor forces at these new companies. Or if the environmentalists block every factory. Or if Democrat regulators continue to undermine the business climate.

Obama said: We should start with our tax code. Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and everyone knows it. Comment: You lie! Companies have moved overseas because the Democrats have forced them. And then the same Democrats want sky-high taxes on firms that stay.

Obama said: Tonight, I’m announcing the creation of a Trade Enforcement Unit that will be charged with investigating unfair trading practices in countries like China. There will be more inspections… Comment: Wow. Another bureaucracy. Big surprise.

Obama said: I also hear from many business leaders who want to hire in the United States but can’t find workers with the right skills. Growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job. Think about that: openings at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work. Comment: Workers are not prepared because of our pathetic, union-controlled public schools and our left-wing colleges that teach ‘global warming’ alarmism rather than real science.

Obama said: Model partnerships between businesses like Siemens and community colleges in places like Charlotte, and Orlando, and Louisville are up and running. Now you need to give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers, places that teach people skills that businesses are looking for right now, from data management to high-tech manufacturing. Comment: Yes, more money for community colleges. That is what this is all about. Because these colleges are just like high schools – all run by the government and full of unionized employees who vote largely Democrat.

Obama said: At a time when other countries are doubling down on education, tight budgets have forced states to lay off thousands of teachers. We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance. Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies, just to make a difference. Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test… Comment: Blah, blah, blah. Many of these teachers stink. And many of the public schools stink. They’re all run by and for the benefit of Democrat unions. They don’t need more money. A public school teacher in the failed Milwaukee, Wisconsin system makes $77 an hour in wages, benefits and pension.

Obama said: Extend the tuition tax credit we started that saves millions of middle-class families thousands of dollars. And give more young people the chance to earn their way through college by doubling the number of work-study jobs in the next five years.  Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid. We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition. We’ll run out of money. States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets. And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down. Comment: These price-gouging colleges and universities are run by Obama’s left-wing cronies. And tuition tax credits are nothing more than a way to shift those costs to the taxpayer, and let the price gougers off the hook.

Obama said: And nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy. Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration. And tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75 percent of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Comment: It makes no difference what the feds do in most of these cases. Obama knows that his radical enviro cronies will halt or try to stop development. In New York state, in the Marcellus Shale natural gas area, enviros are putting on the pressure to stop the whole process.

Obama said: I’ve ordered every federal agency to eliminate rules that don’t make sense. We’ve already announced over 500 reforms, and just a fraction of them will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years. Comment: Yeah, right the Democrat reformer. What bunk. For every reform, five other laws kick in. Meanwhile state and local laws and regs create a whole new layer of bureaucracy.

Obama said: When Bryan Ritterby was laid off from his job making furniture, he said he worried that, at 55, no one would give him a second chance. But he found work at Energetx, a wind turbine manufacturer in Michigan. Before the recession, the factory only made luxury yachts. Today, it’s hiring workers like Bryan, who said, “I’m proud to be working in the industry of the future.” Comment: It’s all government jobs. ‘Green energy’ only survives with taxpayer subsidies.

Obama said: I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable and double down on a clean energy industry that never has been more promising. Pass clean-energy tax credits. Create these jobs. Comment: This is a lie that Democrats and enviros repeat over and over. The oil industry has never been subsidized. “Subsidized” means it gets more from the government than it pays in taxes. The oil industry does not need subsidies; it is profitable. ‘Green energy’ on the other hand, would never survive without subsidies.

Obama said: So much of America needs to be rebuilt. We’ve got crumbling roads and bridges, a power grid that wastes too much energy, an incomplete high-speed broadband network that prevents a small-business owner in rural America from selling her products all over the world. Comment: Here’s the “infrastructure crisis” again. Yet Obama spent $800 billion in ‘stimulus’ and fixed zero crumbling roads and bridges. What a phony.

Obama said: We’ll also establish a Financial Crimes Unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud and protect people’s investments. Some financial firms violate major antifraud laws because there’s no real penalty for being a repeat offender. Comment: Obama made this speech on the very same day that the second biggest Ponzi swindler in American history, R. Allen Stanford, went on trial in Texas. Stanford is a HUGE Democrat liberal. Like Bernie Madoff and virtually all of the other swindlers.

Obama said: Finally, none of this can happen unless we also lower the temperature in this town. We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction, that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around commonsense ideas. Comment: Yeah, right, from the guy who told his audience to “punish your enemies”.

Please  visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

If you want to see the contrast between an arrogant, clueless socialist elite and the people of the world who actually go to work every day, look no further than this article, Davos elites to seek reforms of ‘outdated’ capitalism, from Breitbart.com.

‘”We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations,” said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum (held annually in Davos, Switzerland). “Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole. We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual.” Schwab added that “capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us.”’

So what is Davos?

It might be called The Annual Blowhard Festival of Economics, where, according to Breitbart, ‘Some 1,600 economic and political leaders, including 40 heads of states and governments, will be asked to come up with new ideas as they converge at eastern Switzerland’s chic ski station for the 42nd edition of the five-day World Economic Forum’ held in late January.

Yes, just what we need… ‘1,600 economic and political leaders’, the same people who created this economic mess.

How about 1,600 businessmen and businesswomen from all over the world? You know, people who actually create jobs and wealth?

Oh, no. We need to listen to these insufferable actors like US senator John Kerry, who married into a fortune, who has never created one single penny of wealth in his lifetime but who is uber-critical of our capitalist wealth creation system. Or left-wing Bill Clinton who is reported to have earned tens of millions of dollars giving speeches in the last ten years… you know, money only for himself, not for others in the way that capitalist Henry Ford created cars for the masses and hundreds of thousands of jobs making them.

And look at where these clowns are meeting – in the heart of Europe, which has been a socialistic bastion for centuries, which has practiced rabid nanny-state politics for the last 50 years and which is in many places in a state of total collapse.

Wasn’t socialism supposed to create utopia?

Yes. In theory, it always does. But in reality it creates hell.

Meanwhile the current American crisis was set off by the “subprime crisis” in which the government (i.e., state socialism) forced banks to loan trillions to poor people to buy houses, people who couldn’t and didn’t pay it back. Now massive American indebtedness, caused by reckless government spending over many decades and particularly under Obama, is preventing any kind of economic rebound.

Meanwhile China and India are rising as our Western economies sink. Because in the last 20 years those two nations have adopted free-market capitalism after socialism and communism strangled their economies for decades. And now they are laughing at the West for doing what they did for years.

Now just look at where these elites hold their Blowhard Economic Festival – in one of the most posh resorts in the whole world, Davos, Switzerland. This is classic arrogance, looking down their noses at the rest of the world just like American academics look down their noses at the rest of the nation from their price-gouging university ramparts as they live in comfort and economic security.

This is so much of the same baloney. What the world needs to do is to expose these Davos hogs for their corruption, selfishness, greed and incompetence.

No, Mr. Klaus Schwab, it is YOU who is outmoded. It is YOUR way of thinking that has ruined the world. It is YOUR wealthy champagne-sipping elitism that is causing the world’s people to fall into hopelessness.

Indeed, it is YOUR nanny-state policies, like retiring after 30 years of work and taking the whole month of August for vacation and working 35 hours a week maximum, that are unsustainable. Or how about tens of millions of deadwood government employees worldwide who barely work at all, but instead are involved in featherbedding and economic corruption sanctioned by the political left.

And then you elites tell us hard-working people of the world that we need to reform??! What utter rubbish. These Davos fakers should be out scrubbing bathrooms so that they can learn what real work is.

So who is Klaus Schwab?

His profile explains it all. He is a do-nothing academic and a United Nations shill. He has never created a single penny of wealth in his life. He only has created “foundations” and “non-profit organizations” and sucked the academic boob his whole life. Wikipedia.org reports:

‘Klaus Martin Schwab (born March 30, 1938) is a German economist best known as the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. His wife and former secretary, Hilde, co-founded the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurshipwith him. He was born in 1938, in Ravensburg Germany.

In 1971, Schwab founded the World Economic Forum as a not-for-profit foundation committed to improving the state of the world, later building it into today’s global partnership of business, political, and intellectual leaders.

In 1998 Schwab and his wife founded the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a non-profit organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.

In 2004, Schwab created a new foundation using the US$ 1 million prize money from the Dan David Prize he received that year. The Forum of Young Global Leaders aims to bring together over 500 people under 40 from all walks of life who have demonstrated their commitment to improving the state of the world, and encourage them to work together over the span of five years to identify and realize global change.

Dr. Schwab holds a Doctorate in Economics (summa cum laude) from the University of Fribourg, a Doctorate in Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Additionally, he has been the recipient of seven honorary doctorates and is an honorary professor of the Ben-Gurion University of Israel and the China Foreign Affairs University.

Schwab was Professor of Business Policy at the University of Geneva from 1972 to 2002.  He is the author of several books. Since 1979 he has published the Global Competitiveness Report, an annual report assessing the potential for increasing productivity and economic growth of countries around the world, written by a team of economists. The report is based on a methodology developed by Schwab, measuring competitiveness not only in terms of productivity but also based on sustainability criteria.

From 1993-1995, Schwab was a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Sustainable Development.From 1996-1998, he was Vice-Chairman of the UN Committee for Development Planning.  He also exercised a number of functions in the global public interest, such as being a member of The Peres Centre for Peace and a member of the board of the Lucerne Festival. During the earlier years of his career, he was on a number of company boards, such as The Swatch Group, The Daily Mail Group, and Vontobel Holding.’

What a con man this guy is. Notice again – never one single penny of wealth creation in his entire resume. Yet here he is writing reports and telling the world we need to abandon capitalism, the only system that actually creates wealth in the first place.

The average small-town welder in Iowa does more for the global economy than this charlatan does.

Look at what else Breitbart.com reported:

‘But anti-capitalist demonstrators are planning to make their presence felt. The Occupy (World Economic Forum) protestors have built igloos in the middle of the (Davos) village perched 1,500 metres above sea level and are planning a protest against those they call “self-proclaimed elites.” ‘

Yes, indeed, for once the ‘occupiers’ are correct – these Davos attendees are “self-proclaimed elites”. They are overwhelmingly left-wing socialist political/academic hacks, the same people whom ‘occupiers’ think should be running everything, the same elites who have ruined the world with massive debt and unbridled government interventions in the global economy.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

This essay could be called Politician In the Fast Lane or GOP Ticket to the Future. But you would never want to make jest of first-term South Dakota Republican US congresswoman Kristi Noem’s dark past as summarized in this wikipedia.org entry:

‘Noem received 27 traffic citations, including 20 speeding tickets from 1989 to 2010. Noem incurred stop sign and seat belt violations, no driver’s license, failure to appear notices, and two arrest warrants. Noem said, “I’m not proud of my driving record, but [I've] been working hard to be a better example to young kids and young drivers out there.” She has paid her fines and penalties.’

So what are we to make of congresswoman Noem?

We conservatives say: Welcome to the US Congress. Because Noem’s all-American resume – speeding tickets included, since the spaces indeed are wide in South Dakota – is precisely the kind of background that every congressperson in our great nation should have.

Noem’s resume reads like a Sarah Palin of the Prairie. The Washington Post described Noem as “a made-for-Fox News star” and a “mama grizzly” in the Palin mold. Noem is a pro-life evangelical Christian to boot.

Noem was born in 1971, and her profession is described as farmer, rancher, hunter, hunting lodge owner and restaurateur.  She was born to a South Dakota farm family, and when her father was killed in a farming accident – farming is statistically one of the most dangerous professions in America – Noem left college to help keep the farm operating. All three of her siblings since have joined Noem, her husband and her three children in nurturing the family farm through the difficult times that all farmers face.

Noem expects to earn her college degree in political science by 2014. To which we conservatives say: Don’t worry about it, congresswoman. Just be who you are – a genuine, hard-working, sensible conservative American. Traditional education does not matter. Common sense is the most crucial need in Washington today. It will take you and our nation much further than any college degree.

Because Noem is the precisely the type of person that we need many more of in the US Congress, people with real-world experience in an essential industry like farming. This is what the Founders believed in in anticipating a citizen-legislator form of government.

Noem represented the South Dakota 6th District in the state’s House of Representatives from from 2007 to 2010. She served as the assistant majority leader from 2009-2010, obviously showing great promise in her public life.

She was elected to the US Congress in the Republican landslide of November 2010 defeating 3-term incumbent Democrat lawyer Stephanie Herseth Sandlin for South Dakota’s single at-large congressional seat.

Noem was endorsed by 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney and defeated Herseth Sandlin by 48.1% to 45.9%. An independent candidate got 6% of the vote.  And with Romney a likely nominee for president, you may be seeing Kristi Noem in even higher roles in American government.

An attractive woman and a principled conservative, Noem has voted to repeal ObamaCare and has stated that she will work with like-minded House members to defund the act and to replace it with measures that are more affordable and private-sector oriented, including restraints on trial lawyers and allowing consumers to buy health insurance across state lines.

Noem is a fiscal hawk and a supporter of a balanced budget. She wants to see cuts in budgets for the Environmental Protection Agency, Medicaid and many other federal programs and departments.

Noem wants to eliminate the estate tax and simplify the tax code to make it less cumbersome She also wants to lower the corporate tax rate and has said that she would not raise taxes to balance the budget.

Her animus toward the estate tax comes from personal experience. Her father’s death left the family with a large estate tax debt which made it very difficult for the farm to remain in the family.

Noem also is a strong advocate of 2nd Amendment gun rights.

Noem continues to support offshore oil drilling and federal ethanol subsidies to farmers in South Dakota. This stance on ethanol, along with federal subsidies that her family farm has received, certainly seem not to be very conservative positions. But they might just be a response to the role that heavy federal taxes and estate taxes and regulations have played in harming farmers in the first place.

She opposes a bill introduced by Democrat South Dakota US senator Tim Johnson that would designate 48,000 acres of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland as protected wilderness. She says that the land already is managed like a wilderness and that raising its status will further limit leaseholder access to the land and threaten ranchers’ grazing rights.

So good luck congresswoman. And by the way, keep your foot on the gas. We need more people like you powering our nation as quickly as possible toward genuine reform.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

The outcome of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary has turned the race upside down with presumed front-runner Mitt Romney losing badly to New Gingrich 41% to 27%.

This is an astounding turnaround from Gingrich’s poor showings in the Iowa and New Hampshire contests and further scrambles the GOP primary field.

Gingrich’s strong showing in a conservative place like South Carolina is not wholly unexpected, although the state’s popular GOP governor Nikki Haley had endorsed Romney.

South Carolina shows that this may be a volatile race. But the upcoming January 31 Florida primary, with a more moderate electorate than South Carolina, could turn the race back to Romney who also is expected to do well in several early February contests. But then again, who knows.

What does this South Carolina outcome portend?

It means more tension and it again pits the moderate GOP Establishment against the Tea Party conservatives. It’s an old story.

Some observers were hoping that a string of Romney wins would put the primaries in the past so that Romney could focus on Obama. But the other side of that coin is that an extended primary could actually benefit the eventual GOP nominee by relieving him of becoming the one clear target for Democrat attacks until later on.

And despite the disorder associated with feuding candidates, an extended primary also keeps the Republicans in the news with opportunities to promote their agenda and attack Obama.

Primaries like this one are notorious for upsetting the plans of the “experts” anyway. Who can forget Obama/Clinton in 2008? It was fratricide after literally several years in which Hillary was the assumed nominee.

There is no need for conservatives or Republicans to panic over South Carolina, however. Because Obama already has sunk to the bottom among many key voting blocs. Democrats are as worried as Republicans at this point.

For the GOP this primary conflict is an old story. The Establishment wing of the party never even liked Ronald Reagan despite his success at revitalizing the GOP. And who could forget the bad blood between McCain and Bush in 2000.

So now Newt Gingrich is going to anoint himself the conservative alternative to Establishment figure Romney and many conservatives are going to go with Newt in the name of political payback to the Establishment.

Gingrich in fact has a lot going for him from the conservative point of view – he led the 1994 Republican revolution; he led the way in Congress to balanced federal budgets; he advocated the welfare reforms that Clinton ultimately signed; he is very smart; he has been strong in debates; he has trashed Obama without apology; and he aggressively has taken on the media.

The big problem, however, is Newt Gingrich as a person. First, he has not been such a pure conservative, praising FDR and Teddy Roosevelt and supporting an individual health insurance mandate.

And second he has alienated millions of Americans throughout his career, including people in his own party, and for good reason – because Newt is not the most likeable guy in the world. Polls show him with very high public negatives, as much as -30 in some polls unfavorable/favorable.  And current polls show Gingrich much less likely to be able to beat Obama compared to Romney.

But all that could change…

To put it bluntly many people just don’t like Newt because Newt often seems like he is out for only one thing… Newt Gingrich. If you asked people whom they would rather drink a beer with, Gingrich or Obama, a clear majority would probably pick Obama at this point.

But that all could change…

And Gingrich’s checkered personal life is as much a subject of debate as his strong and sometimes conflicting and controversial political stances. His ex-wife’s recent claim that Gingrich wanted an “open marriage” is going to linger no matter the truth. And it does in fact comport with Gingrich’s randy image.

But as they say, nice guys finish last. So perhaps Gingrich’s aggressiveness and his darker, untamed side are good things. Gingrich is just being out front about himself and his agenda. He is saying that he has his flaws but that he will take on Obama and lead the nation with toughness. This appeals to many people who see Romney and the GOP Establishment as too timid in confronting the socialist Democrat juggernaut that controls our nation.

Newt is the stereotype Republican – a gruff, smart, white guy who knows what he knows, who does not take any nonsense, who is not afraid to speak his mind, and who is not politically correct regarding racial issues or other “sensitive” topics. And this is both a positive and a negative. Thus if he were the nominee, he would be strong in some ways and weak in others – like anyone else, of course.

So Republicans and conservatives have a dilemma: Do they elevate a man like Newt who is aggressive and who seems somewhat cold and clinical at times but who is outspoken and bold on behalf of the conservative cause? Is this the type of leader that Republicans need as the GOP standard bearer for 2012? Because these certainly are good characteristics in a president.

Or is Mitt Romney’s “softer” approach better in the general election?

Romney is really a classic successful white Mormon/Christian American man. He is wealthy (estimate $270 million), disciplined, smart, handsome and a good businessman. Romney seems like a nice guy with a beautiful family. He seems happy, unlike Obama and his wife or like the abrasive Gingrich.

His life is an open book. He probably is a decent person in private. Romney’s one wife (Gingrich is in his third marriage) seems like a nice person; she surely never has disparaged America as Michelle Obama did. Romney is like your wealthy neighbor – he may be somewhat aloof and you may not be best friends, but he is not a creep either.

But there is a hard edge to Romney. Don’t believe for a second that Romney is like McCain – someone who doesn’t really care about being president. Romney wants it badly; this is his second try. And he will do whatever he needs to do to win. And with this South Carolina loss, he probably will change his strategy somewhat and drop the Mr. Nice Guy stuff if he perceives it as harming him.

Watch him in the Tampa debate Monday night (January 23) to see if he becomes more openly aggressive.

Just before the South Carolina primary word was leaking out that Republican Establishment figures were unhappy that Romney was falling in the polls, that he was not being aggressive enough, that he was too nice, and that Gingrich was rising again.

On the other hand, reality has shown that Romney has repeatedly slammed Obama and has used scorched-earth tactics in the primaries. So Romney is no Pollyanna, rest assured. In fact he may only appear that way temporarily as Gingrich wins one race.

But these polls have been all over the place and this race is still very unsettled. Remember last summer when Gingrich’s New Hampshire staff quit and everyone considered him dead? Or that most observers counted John McCain out in Summer 2007 until he surged in the primaries?

This all can change, rest assured. Quickly. After all Jon Hunstman came in far ahead of Gingrich in New Hampshire and then dropped out.

And the Republican Establishment which backs Romney has not put the full force of its power behind Romney… yet. But they will when necessary like in Florida. They clearly do not want Gingrich as the nominee and have a lot of power to stop him.

So Republicans and conservatives face an ongoing debate over the soul of the GOP. And this is nothing new. And for the Establishment to count out the conservative wing of the party is folly. And for conservatives to dismiss Romney and the Establishment is folly as well. They must all work together to defeat Obama. The only question is: Who will lead?

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

The Obama administration has stopped the Keystone XL pipeline for now. This is to appease his radical environmental supporters. The pipeline’s builder TransCanada is expected to apply again to build the pipe, possibly on a different route.

Meanwhile Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper has warned that Canada may sell the oil to China if the pipeline to US refineries is permanently blocked.

So… so much for Obama’s oft-touted “energy independence” from foreign sources. This is another Obama nail in the American economic coffin.

Keystone is designed to carry crude oil from sources in Alberta, Canada through the American Midwest to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

There are several reasons that the pipeline is being opposed by the enviro left:

*First Democrat liberals oppose the involvement of the conservative billionaire Koch Brothers in the Keystone project. Because the Koch Brothers have been involved in the petroleum industry for decades; that is where their fortune came from. But liberals hate them because of their conservatism and because of their involvement with petroleum.

That is one of the reasons liberals hate Sarah Palin. Because she used her political muscle to push through a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48 through Canada that had been stalled for three decades. Environmentalists also still are enraged over the construction of the Alaska pipeline, which first started carrying crude oil in 1977.

*Meanwhile, on the enviro side of the Keystone issue, the ecologists are opposed to the Canadian ‘oil sands’ that are the source of the oil; and they are claiming that the pipeline will rupture or blow up or leak toxic oil onto the ground and into the massive Ogalalla water aquifer that is situated beneath the Midwest.

This is all nonsense. ‘Oil sands’ are oil mixed in sand, not pumped out of underground reservoirs. Canada is reported to have a 1 trillion barrel supply. One trillion barrels is the equivalent of all the oil that the world has used in the last 150 years.

Environmentalists are claiming that ‘oil sands’ are dirty and environmentally unsound. Yet this is what they say about every single carbon source (oil, coal, natural gas) on earth. If we listen to them, we will have no energy whatsoever.

Regarding the potential rupture of the pipeline, America already is criss-crossed by tens of thousands of miles of pipelines. They operate perfectly well and are 99.9% safe because only God is perfect. And the Keystone line will be built with the latest technology, which will make it even better and safer than earlier lines.

Meanwhile the agricultural Midwest already is showered in millions of gallons of pesticides and herbicides and chemical fertilizers every year and dotted by thousands of fuel tanks, and there doesn’t seem to be much outrage about all that harming the aquifer. Because the ‘rupture’ argument is phony.

This Keystone project would create tens of thousands of jobs, an example of a real ‘shovel-ready’ project that will put people to work immediately. It will not be one of these fake ‘green jobs’ projects with the government subsidizing it every step and creating only government jobs for inefficient energy.

So what are the enviros really up to?

They are seeking to strangle our petroleum supplies and make traditional energy artificially expensive so that solar/wind don’t seem so expensive in comparison. Because the relatively low and stable price of carbon fuels is what is preventing solar and wind from becoming economically viable.

That is why enviros are seeking to shut down every single oil/coal/natural gas project that they possibly can. It is an attack on our economy. Because many of these people are radical, left-wing anti-growth activists who hate America. Period. End of story.

Meanwhile Obama wants these fake ’green jobs’ because under socialism more and more people work for the government or are reliant on government. It is estimated that the American workforce employed by government today on the federal, state and local level is 30% bigger than it needs to be (with 22.5 million people) by an estimated 5 million people compared to the population just 50 years ago. And more and more people are going to work for government every day in relation to private-sector job growth.

So as they fight the Keystone pipeline, the enviros are pushing more and more inefficient and ineffective windmills and solar panels to create more wealth for the left – from government handouts – and less energy and higher prices for everyone else.

There’s only one problem; ‘green energy’ does not work. Only petroleum and coal and natural gas and nuclear power can provide our energy sources.

Here is a test: Next Thanksgiving, one person should cook the turkey in the oven in the kitchen and the environmentalist should try to cook it in the most efficient solar oven available in the back yard using the sun’s rays. Then see who gets to eat dinner in a normal way.

You get the point.

We need to stop this ‘green energy’ sham and get serious about our future energy supply. We have dithered for decades.  We have built no new refineries or nuclear plants in 30 years, yet windmills are sprouting all over.

This is bogus. Wind energy is only about one-third as efficient as nuclear and coal or oil.

And if you think this is no big deal, try living on one-third the energy you use today. Instead of putting 21 gallons in your tank try getting along on 7. Or put solar panels on your house without a government subsidy ($30,000 for the average home solar installation, versus $1,000 per year average for electricity from your utility.)

Environmentalists manipulate every fact for themselves. In a recent interview on the Sean Hannity radio show, the washed-up Follywood celebrity and Keystone opponent Darryl Hannah said something like “enough solar energy falls on the earth every day to power man’s needs one hundred times over”. This is the type of sophistry that you can read in any enviro pamphlet. And it very well may be true.

Only problem is that nobody has figured out how to efficiently harness that very diffuse solar power.

Because the systems that man has developed cannot do it. And they never will be efficient; everything has been tried. Which is why we must stop subsidizing solar and wind and wasting our precious wealth on ‘green energy’ and get back to those energy sources that we really need to progress – oil, coal, natural gas and above all, nuclear power. And the Keystone pipeline.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

For those of us who were in the room last August at the RedState gathering in Charleston, South Carolina to see Texas governor Rick Perry announce his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination, Perry’s withdrawal from the race is a sad event.

Rick Perry easily could be a great president of the United States. He is bold, strong, patriotic, smart and obviously has good policies because Texas is thriving relative to the rest of the nation.

And the fact that he was inordinately harmed by one verbal debate slip-up, about the three federal agencies that he would eliminate as president, surely would never put a Democrat out of contention. After all Obama campaigned in “57 states”, did he not?

Perry is the leader of a state with some of the best economic growth stats in the country. Meanwhile Obama’s Illinois is sinking like a stone and is deeply in debt, Andrew Cuomo’s New York state is bleeding jobs and people while left-wing California is in slow and sure decline.

Don’t count Perry out in the future however. He is still a young man in political terms. And he certainly learned a lot in this effort that will make him a better candidate down the road.

Meanwhile the media assaults continue on the Republican field. Mitt Romney was singled out this past week for his tax rate, for his investments, for his success. Meanwhile any alternative to Obama would be an improvement. Romney would be superior to Obama in his sleep.

This strategy to tarnish any and all opposition to the hard-left Democrat agenda is the abhorrent American Media Left seeking to push our nation into slow decay as socialism always does, something that we conservatives have always predicted would happen with a potemkin president like Obama and a compliant media and Congress.

After the media hit on Herman Cain we again saw the template – destroy, destroy, destroy. Forget about the truth. This is our dishonest two-faced news hounds at work. This is the 1960s all grown up: Tell any lie as long as it advances you and your left-wing cause because you are so eternally wise.

By the way, where are Herman Cain’s accusers today? Because they seem to have disappeared just as honest people could have predicted.

The media had a Gingrich strategy this week since Newt was surging again into the lead in four separate polls – weaken Romney with their attacks on his success and then, after Gingrich won the South Carolina primary, drop the bomb on Newt this coming Monday with the video of his ex-wife charging that Newt wanted an open marriage.

This is a very disturbing revelation. And unfortunately it does comport somewhat with the image that we have of Gingrich – don’t forget that this is his third marriage and that, as a 19 year old, that he married his 26-year-old former algebra teacher.

But opening the CNN debate, Newt was not taking the charge lying down and was bold by calling the airing of the charge “as close to despicable as anything I can imagine” and (to CNN moderator John King) that “you and your staff chose to start the debate with it” and that “the story is false” and then Newt probably had every Republican in America cheering with “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans…”

This is the kind of tough language that Republicans are using this year after decades of playing defense against the Media Left. And if Gingrich continues with it, he could very well be the nominee. Because the anti-Obama sentiment is also an anti-media sentiment.

But a denial is not an acquittal. And thus Gingrich now is caught in a “he said, she said” episode and the air may never be clear, allowing the issue to fester. And rest assured that millions of women who might have reluctantly voted Republican are now suspicious of Newt and his third wife whom they now see as a snake. The issue will remain unless the ex-Mrs. Gingrich recants it.

Before the Mrs. Gingrich tape, Newt was shown leading in South Carolina. That is why ABC did not want the tape to come out until Monday – to let Gingrich win on Saturday and then plunge him into controversy and chaos, along with the GOP nomination process.

But Drudge blew the caper wide open on Thursday and so the story is now out. Whether it hurts Newt in South Carolina is to be seen. But the ex-wife’s comments indeed are devastating and they add to Gingrich’s questionable image.

Meanwhile the media attacks on Romney are non-stop – that his success is a bad thing, that he too rich, that he didn’t pay enough in taxes. Expect this to continue. The attacks on senator Santorum have been somewhat muted, but expect them to ramp if Santorum rises again.

What are we to make of all this?

It is just business as usual in the corrupt Media Left. They are using the radical Saul Alinsky playbook – pick your target, isolate the target, destroy the target. Use every dirty trick in the book.

And what does Alinsky recommend that the media do for Obama?

Glorify him. Ignore his gaffes, his mistakes, the terrible economy, his incompetence, his wife’s utter arrogance.

Ultimately, however, the Democrats are desperate. They know the score – that Obama is slipping away and that Americans are angry. And so expect the worst as they seek to keep him in office.

Therefore we conservatives must choose our nominee carefully. Newt has already been hurt by his erratic behavior and his checkered past. This new revelation is going to harm him in a general election if he is the nominee, despite his denial. The anti-Newt ads will be everywhere and his denial will be ignored.

So we conservatives must get beyond Gingrich’s credentials and his intelligence and look at the whole man just as we must do with all the candidates. This election is too crucial for any other approach.

The controversy over Christian quarterback Tim Tebow demonstrates exactly how far America has drifted from its Christian roots.

Tebow certainly uplifted millions in his first year in the NFL, but the Christian haters too came out of everywhere. And if their level of prejudice were aimed at, say, a homosexual or a black or an illegal alien, it would be condemned roundly in every media quarter.

Charles Barkley, a former basketball player who is black and who now is a sports commentator on TV said of Tebow, “the national nightmare continues.” This is precisely what you would expect from an uneducated bigot.

Just imagine… Tebow was in the news for, what, two months, and by dint of his Christian faith he is being called every name in the book.

Where is Barkley to denounce the real “national nightmare” of millions of illegitimate and poor children who have been born to runaway fathers in black America, fathers who never will see, support or love those children after they are born? Or where is Barkley to denounce the gambling and womanizing and drug-cheating and other abhorrent behaviors that are rampant in sports?

Nowhere. But one Christian rises up for just sixty days and the haters came out in full force.

And Barkley might do well to study history. It was the mighty force of Christian abolitionists that ended slavery and allowed the Charles Barkleys of America to live in mansions rather than in shacks.

These attacks are scandalous and they expose many in the sports world and in the sports media and in America itself for who they really are – a universe of faith-less materialists who know nothing about the world beyond their basketball courts and their luxury SUVs and their 10-foot televisions and their hideous manors.

Tebow is easily one of the most decent people ever to play pro football. His parents were Christian missionaries and during her pregnancy with Tim, Tebow’s mother faced possible death but did not abort her child. Tim was home-schooled along with his four siblings.

Tim Tebow is a good soul and was never seeking the fortune of his newfound fame. He does not believe what he believes in order to build his “brand”. He simply is an authentic Christian who happens to have played well in his first pro season. And he surely will play well for many more. We pray he will pursue his greatness.

For years Tebow has quietly and humbly given his time to sick kids and to other charities. He is gentle and forgiving. He never has sought attention for his good works or even for his miraculous wins in 2011 like a lot of these media gluttons would. He even says that he is keeping his virginity for his future wife and the mother of his children.

Wow. Good for him. Finally a decent role model for our children to substitute for all the degenerates that Follywood and professional sports have given us over the last few decades.

Look at what Tebow said about a success that most Americans would die for: “Number one, what my mom and dad preached to me as a kid. Just because you may have athletic ability and may be able to play a sport doesn’t make you any more special than anybody else. It doesn’t mean that God loves you more than anybody else. We play a sport, and it’s a game. At the end of the day, that’s all it is, is a game.”

Meanwhile the Christian haters do not even understand the founding of America, that Christianity is the basis for our… and their… freedom and prosperity. Here are some quotes from our Founding Fathers about the necessity for a God-based society.

John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the second president of the United States said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration said, “(T)he only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be aid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”

Noah Webster, author of the first dictionary said, “The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.” John Jay, the first chief justice of the US Supreme Court said, “The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.”  George Washington said, “Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.”

And on and on. So there… Go look up the quotes or read David Barton’s wonderful book, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution & Religion.

But the haters are never scholars. They know nothing about history. Most are uneducated like Barkley or have been mis-educated at our universities and have been turned into atheist parrots. Their whole focus in life is on their own material comfort. The Seven Deadly Sins are often their Ten Commandments. The narcissistic, materialistic and God-less society that they have nurtured, and that much of America has become, is a frightening thing to behold.

After a string of victories that brought Tebow to national attention, he lost some games and all the haters immediately shouted in unison, “So where’s your God now, Tebow!?!”

This shows how frantic and emotional the haters are and how little they even understand about our Christian faith. Expecting Tebow to win every game on account of his faith would be like saying that God should have saved Christian America from the civil war and the great depression. This ignores the fact that God does not have control over man and his sinful and imperfect world.

The haters do not understand that our temporal world is separate from God and is full of sin, hatred and anger. That Christians are not immune to the wrath of man or of mother nature or of circumstance. Or of losing a football game. Because if Tim Tebow won every game, he would be God. And that is not possible.

The haters do not understand that loving God is a long-term proposition for the strong of heart and mind, people who believe that man can be better only by first sensing the presence of a perfect Supreme Being and then seeking to please His perfection or even emulate it.

And the haters do not understand that faith is a matter of, well, faith – that we Christians do not claim that God is something like the “settled science” that Al Gore foolishly claims about his ‘religion’ which is pagan environmentalism.

No, faith in God does not allow us to magically transcend or bypass the failures and vicissitudes of mankind. Just look at Tim Tebow’s Job-like rout at the hands of the New England Patriots when maximum media focus was on him.

Indeed faith in a loving Christian God is an ongoing process and can only uplift man when more and more of the world’s people recognize man as hopeless and faith in God as the only alternative to a barren and meaningless existence.

Faith in a perfect God is a partnership of as many of the faithful as we can muster. But once the faithful fall below a certain percentage of the population – into the despicable Charles Barkley category – then society will pay a huge price. In fact we already have.

But over the long run we know that Tim Tebow and people like him will turn that around. May he play for many, many years. He had a great start.

In the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina on January 16, Newt Gingrich took on a racial debate with tough language.

Here is a summary of the exchange between journalist Juan Williams, who is black, and Gingrich:

After Gingrich said recently that millions of poor black children have no good role models, the American Race Machine (black America, Democrats, the Media Left, Sharpton etc.) took umbrage.

Yet Newt was right. What are the role models in much of black America today?

Answer: Nobody. Nothing. The role models are often drug dealers, poor single mothers, runaway fathers, criminals, thieves and thugs.

But in the American Race Machine tradition, in which every single issue is seen through the prism of a deprived, discriminated-against black America, Williams went on the attack saying to Newt: “Can’t you see this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but as particularly to black Americans?”

Williams said this because most of black America – the 95% that votes Democrat and that is turning the Democrat party into a black party – cannot stop talking about race, no matter the reality. Did you ever notice how many black media figures talk only about one thing when they get on TV, the radio, the internet etc. – about being black and about black issues? Just watch the next interview or commentary that you see.

Which is why so much of black America is in the sad state that it is in. Because if you cannot stop talking about your grievances or your failures or yourself long enough to look outside yourself and to seek to better yourself, then you are going to stay angry and poor like so much of black America.

“No, I don’t see that,” Gingrich said to Williams about his comment being insulting.

Good for Gingrich. This is the type of courageous language that we conservatives need to speak every day. Because we are fed up seeing our tax dollars going down the racial drain and seeing nothing in return.

“Only the elites despise earning money,” said Gingrich, referring to the political elite of the Democrat party which seeks to keep black Americans dependent on the government dole rather than working to make themselves self-reliant.

Williams replied: “My Twitter account has been inundated with people of all races asking if your comments are not intended to belittle (the poor and racial minorities)…”

Why did his Twitter account explode? And why did the Republican debate audience boo Williams for this comment?

Because tens of millions of Americans on both political sides see much of black America as incompetent and incapable, but for opposite reasons. Democrats are exploiting black failure to keep blacks down and under their control. Many white Americans and conservatives, on the other hand, see this Democrat ploy and are angered by it. And they are angry at black Americans not for who they are, but for who the Democrat party has turned them into.

Williams then said that when Gingrich calls Obama a “food stamp president” that it is an unfavorable racial stereotype. This is an example of another black media figure obsessively making every sentence and thought into a racial issue.

But to audience cheers and applause Gingrich replied: “First of all, Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps under Barack Obama than any other president in history.”

Gingrich then said that he believes Americans have a right to “pursue happiness” and “…I will continue to find ways to help poor people find a job, get a job, and learn someday to own the job.”

This is conservative individualism writ large, but it is frightening language to Democrats. Because they want blacks dependent and kept under the Democrats’ thumb with their government handouts being perceived as the only route out of subsistence poverty.

But black America is never going to turn around until fundamental changes are made in the way blacks live their lives and perceive themselves negatively under the iron hand of the Democrat party.

The Media Left were unrelenting on Gingrich. NPR also reported on its website that ‘the shorthand former House Speaker Newt Gingrich uses, calling the nation’s first black president the “food stamp president,” is raising questions.’

In other words, NPR is using the American Race Machine playbook, saying that whenever anyone raises a legitimate challenge to the Democrats’ control of black America or to failed Democrat policies that it is “shorthand” or “code language” or “racist”. And we conservatives are all supposed to run away in fear of any debate.

But those days of running away are over. And this is why the Democrats are terrified of someone like Gingrich.  Because he is saying aloud what millions of white Americans have been saying behind closed doors for decades, including many liberals, rest assured.

Look at how NPR summarized Gingrich’s statement:

‘South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who is black, says it is no longer the “welfare queen,” a line oft-touted by Ronald Reagan, but “king of the food stamps.”… “I guess a lot of people see it as, if Ronald Reagan can do it and be so lionized by conservatives, then I ought to be able to do it,” says Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the House. Clyburn says it’s an old strategy: candidates using race as a wedge to get votes.’

Oh, really?! Using racial issues as a wedge to divide the nation?! Because that is precisely what the Democrats have done for decades. That in fact is how Obama won the presidency. America was essentially dared not to vote for its First Black President despite his inexperience and his questionable past.

And look at what else Clyburn said: “That is something they have been told will work to connect the president as being a black-oriented president, taking away from somebody else to give to black people.”

Yes. Precisely, congressman Clyburn, you are the first Democrat in 50 years to actually admit the problem. This is exactly what tens of millions of hard-working, taxpaying white people think, that the Democrats indeed are taking away their wealth and giving it to black people and creating a slothful, dependent culture that votes Democrat in return.

Meanwhile we conservatives have been saying for 50 years that this relentless redistribution is not only wrong and counterproductive but that there is a solution and that is to fundamentally alter the culture of black America – stigmatize illegitimacy, support marriage, open the churches, open charter schools, shutter the failed public schools, promote civility, encourage a work ethic, encourage cooperation with police, stop the violent rap music, change the outlook to one of optimism and stop looking down your Democrat noses at black Americans and allow them to care for themselves. Because indeed they can if only the Democrats will allow them to.

But Democrats will never let go of black America. Because the worse off black America is, the more Democrats benefit by appearing like the savior.

Look at what else NPR sneaked into its story (note statement italicized for emphasis):

 ‘That depends on the perception that African-Americans benefit disproportionately from the food stamp program, even though blacks are not the majority of food stamp recipients.’

This is another media subterfuge. Because blacks are not technically ‘the majority of food stamp recipients’ because blacks are only 12% of the population. But blacks have the highest RATE of food stamp dependency by far. Which is not significant to the Media Left when they can skew the argument with journalistic sleights of hand.

There is national and international outrage over four American Marines who were videotaped urinating on the corpses of dead Afghans. The Afghans were said to have been Taliban fighters warring against the US. The urination is a violation of international war protocols.

Nikitas3 says: Leave the Marines alone! They have suffered enough in this conflict. They are the best that America has. Give them immediate pardons even before any punitive actions are started and then warn that this will not be tolerated a second time. And close the case.

This is yet another effort by the political left and by radical Islam to turn the attentions of Americans away from the real horrors – of Muslim and Taliban extremists who for decades have been ignoring any sense of human decency, who have been mutilating their dead enemies, who have been maiming and killing innocent children and women, who have been blowing themselves up in public places in acts of terror designed to harm the maximum number of noncombatants, and who have been shooting from cemeteries and mosques, all in violation of Geneva Conventions protocols.

Then one small group of US Marines is shown urinating on these dead skunks and the world is outraged.

This outrage itself is the outrage… It is being whipped up by a left-wing anti-American, pro-radical-Islam world media seeking to smear the US and its military. Again.

And the people who will cheer-lead the prosecution of these Marines and who already have convicted them in a trial-by-media are the same ones who are doing everything in the book to get soft treatment and Constitutional protections for Geneva-defying terrorists in American courts and prisons.

Hamid Karzai, the corrupt leader of the non-nation called Afghanistan where our Marines are fighting to keep that non-nation from toppling into the abyss of genocide and oppression at the hands of the Taliban, has called the Marines’ actions “completely inhumane and condemnable in the strongest possible terms.” Karzai is calling on the US military to “apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

This is like Al Capone calling for the arrest of schoolkids gambling for pennies.

We should pull our troops out of Afghanistan and let Karzai deal with the Taliban on his own. They will eat him up within a week if the US leaves. He should keep his big mouth shut as long as we are keeping him alive and in power.

Our spineless defense secretary Leon Panetta, who himself served a whole two years in the Army, called the Marines’ actions “utterly deplorable” and immediately telephoned Karzai pledging a full investigation so that Afghanistan can get past the incident and return to normal – war, genocide, poverty, malnutrition and thievery.

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who has done zero of substance in her tenure except react to events after the fact with canned platitudes, expressed “total dismay” at the events.

Who could forget Abu Ghraib, the allegedly Geneva-defying treatment of terrorist prisoners in Iraq by US soldiers, which was even called ‘torture’ by our Media Left. And what was the unacceptable conduct of our soldiers?

They put dog collars on the prisoners and put ladies’ panties on the prisoners’ heads. You know, like a joke to humiliate them. The prisoners were never harmed physically in any way.

Meanwhile those same terrorists chop off Americans’ heads on videotape (Nick Berg, Daniel Pearl), drag our dead soldiers’ bodies through the streets (Somalia) and hang the murdered and mutilated bodies of American contractors from bridges (Iraq).

And now in the urination case, there will be a months-long uproar with every Muslim group in America and every Media Left outfit calling for action against our soldiers and Obama standing by conveniently detached when he should be issuing an immediate pardon of these Marines ahead of any prosecution.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for that pardon. It is never going to happen.

Indeed our military once found itself under assault from our enemies abroad. Now the assaults come from within.

General James F. Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, said he had asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to “pull together a team of their very best agents and immediately assign them responsibility to thoroughly investigate every aspect of the filmed event…. The institution of the Marine Corps will not rest until the allegations and the events surrounding them have been resolved. We remain fully committed to upholding the Geneva Convention, the Laws of War, and our own core values.”

This it to toss our heroes to the wolves and to make Amos look like the politically-correct hack that he is so that he can continue on his trajectory to a comfortable retirement with all of its perks and privileges.

This is an utter abomination.

Remember Haditha? Here is wikipedia.org describing that incident:

‘The Haditha killings (also called the Haditha incident or the Haditha massacre) refers to the incident in which 24 Iraqi men, women and children were killed by a group of United States Marines  on November 19, 2005 in Haditha, a city in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar. At least 19 of those killed were civilians. It has been alleged that the killings were retribution for the attack on a convoy of Marines with an improvised explosive device that killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas.

An initial Marine Corps communique reported that 15 civilians were killed by the bomb’s blast and eight insurgents were subsequently killed when the Marines returned fire against those attacking the convoy. However, other evidence uncovered by the media contradicted the Marines’ account. A Time magazine reporter’s questions prompted the United States military to open an investigation into the incident. The investigation claimed it found evidence that “supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot civilians, including unarmed men, women and children”, according to an anonymous Pentagon official. On December 21, 2006, eight Marines from 3^rd Batallion, 1^st Marines were charged in connection with the incident. As of June 2008, charges against seven of the eight Marines had been dropped.’

And the last Marine is on his way to being exonerated.

So notice where the original prompt for prosecution came from… Time magazine and ‘an anonymous Pentagon official’.

Of course. Who needs an eyewitness when you can inflate the story with anonymous sources as our media do every day, and blow the whistle from offices in New York City.

And who took up the charge against the Haditha defendants more vocally than any other American?

The late Democrat US congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, widely known as one of the most corrupt people ever to serve in the House of Representatives. His corruption goes back to the Abscam scandal of 1980. Murtha said about Haditha even before any of the facts were out that “There was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

So a corrupt president of Afghanistan and a corrupt congressman and a corrupt media and a corrupt Democrat political and legal establishment are ganging up on our military time and time and time again.

Indeed corrupt birds of a feather undermine our military together.

It is time to pull our troops out of Afghanistan, to pardon our Marines, to leave the mess in the Middle East behind and to start to rebuild America from the ground up with honor, decency and respect for our soldiers and for our Constitution.

Many of us on the “right side” of the issues are criticizing two Republican presidential candidates for their attacks on Mitt Romney and his private-equity firm Bain Capital.

We expect critiques of capitalism from the simple-minded and agenda-driven Democrats, not from Republicans. Because we know that capitalism, with all of its imperfections, is the only system that actually produces and distributes wealth throughout society i.e., that creates a middle class. Meanwhile socialism only appropriates and distributes existing wealth and thwarts the creation of new wealth, impeding the creation of a middle class.

That is why there is no middle class in communist nations.  The great mass of people under communism are pretty much equal – equally poor, that is.

The attacks on Romney from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, whose presidential campaigns are suffering (Gingrich) or are on life support (Perry), are meant to resonate in South Carolina, the next state on the GOP primary calendar and a place hit hard by the economic downturn.

Perry called Romney’s work “vulture capitalism” while Gingrich said in the New Hampshire debate three days before the primary: “I’m very much for free enterprise. .?.?. I’m not nearly as enamored of a Wall Street model where you can flip companies, you can go in and have leveraged buyouts, you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers”, referring to Bain Capital.

And this is yet another example of Newt Gingrich harming his chance at the presidential nomination. He just keeps compounding his errors.

The Wall Street Journal called the attacks “crude and damaging caricatures of modern business and capitalism” and that Gingrich and Perry “sound like Michael Moore,” the anti-capitalist filmmaker and propagandist.

And the attacks are having the reverse effect by actually rallying some conservatives around Romney, people who were never warm to the Massachusetts governor in the first place.

So what is going on here?

First these attacks represent angry Republicans seriously and stupidly violating in the worst way Ronald Reagan’s 11^th Commandment – Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. Or, in this case, of the Republican agenda. But more disturbingly it is giving ammunition to the Democrats for their campaign against Romney.

And it also shows that Republicans are not even united behind the agenda of capitalist growth that is needed to solve our national economic crisis. Because this crisis was caused by socialism in the first place – by the pollution of our entire financial system with bad paper from trillions in loans that banks were forced to make by the government to low-income Americans.

Think ‘subprime crisis’. That was code language for “bad loans to poor people”, remember? Those two words were all over the news until the Media Left decided they were harmful to the Democrat agenda.

And the housing bubble? It was largely created by one man in the government – federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan – setting interest rates far too low and spurring an artificial housing boom. We capitalists always warn over and over never to let the government set prices (in this case, the “price” of loan money).

Fuel was added to the debate over Bain Capital when Rush Limbaugh highlighted a Romney comment from January 11 about Romney’s work at Bain, in which some companies were downsized and workers were fired to save the rest of the company.

In his comment Romney compared his work at Bain to Obama’s bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in which hundreds of auto dealerships across the nation were closed and tens of thousands of jobs were lost. According to wikipedia.org:

‘On July 10, 2009, GM reported 88,000 U.S. employees, and announced plans to reduce its U.S. workforce to 68,000 by the end of 2009 after filing for bankruptcy.’

Limbaugh said that Romney shot himself in the foot by comparing his own work to Obama’s, by comparing capitalism to socialism. But Romney in fact made a very good point in this emerging debate. Because now we pro-capitalist lapdogs can say that those critical of Bain should also be critical of Obama for doing the exact same thing.

And then we can go on to explain our preference for the Bain/capitalist way by pointing out that Bain ultimately turned failing companies around and created stable firms that can move forward on their own without taxpayer support, while Bain also is said to have created 100,000 net plus jobs even after job cuts at ailing companies are accounted for.

Meanwhile, before he became president, Obama created zero jobs. And since he took office Obama has destroyed millions of American jobs through Democrat policies. And with the bailout of GM and Chrysler, Obama created two government-dependent companies that still owe the taxpayers billions, will never pay it back, and that may very well come back for more government loans.

Don’t think that this auto bailout is over. It’s not. They never are once the government gets involved. Next time GM or Chrysler face any trouble, they may very well end up at the government trough again.

Because the Obama bailout went easy on the unions and did not demand company-wide union renegotiations, while wiping out all private bondholders in GM and Chrysler and ultimately turning much of their investments over to the unions. This is pure wealth-transfer socialism and undermines the core concept on which all growth is based – private investment.

And why did GM and Chrysler need to be bailed out in the first place?

Because of their massive and unsustainable union obligations, that’s why. So in the bailout, you, the taxpayer, bailed out the unions. And then the bailout was structured to help the unions a second time.

So now we have General Motors wasting billions making the Electric Car That Nobody Wants under orders from the government and its environmentalist cronies; union labor costs remain artificially high and will continue to be a drag on GM and Chrysler over the long run; while even Ford, the only one of the Big Three that did not take a bailout, is moving more operations overseas to escape the American unions, taxes, mandates and enviro regs that all come from the Obama Left.

Meanwhile non-union ‘transplant’ car companies in the American South like Toyota and BMW are thriving with sustainable wage bases and perfectly happy workers who do not even want unions.

It is always important to remember when debating economics to talk about The Big Picture. You can always find instances and anecdotes where a private capitalist firm has failed or has been badly managed, or can be portrayed as imperfect as is being done with Bain. It is an ongoing liberal tactic to use anecdotes to make their case.

But in the overall scheme, it is always significant to point to the higher living standards in capitalist nations, and the more opportunities that are available in capitalist economies compared to socialism. That is why millions of Europeans have moved to America even in the last 50 years, while few Americans have moved to Nanny State Europe.

Why aren’t Euro economies thriving? Aren’t they practicing utopian socialism?

Yes they are. And they are failing because their socialistic economies have been suffering while being buoyed only by the economic engine of the planet – the decreasingly capitalistic United States of America. And with the American financial crisis rooted in the subprime crisis, the weakness of Euro socialism is now exposed. But you will never find any reference to that fact in the Media Left or in the Democrat party.

Meanwhile Democrats and their big-government agenda are today continuing to thwart the creation of wealth in America as they have for many decades, just as Europe has had as much as twice the unemployment of America in the postwar period.

Indeed it is their left-wing agenda that, in The Big Picture, is the agenda of job cuts, despair and lack of opportunity.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

Here is a recent news report from politico.com:

‘As states across the nation ramp up their efforts to catch illegal immigrants, the Obama administration on Thursday launched a new free hotline for people busted on violations to get help.

The hotline, run by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, is available 24/7 for detained individuals to phone if they think they “may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime.”

The hotline will have translation services available in several different languages. ICE personnel will gather the caller’s information and send it to a field office for immediate action, according to the press release.’

Does this pro-illegal-immigrant policy seem like the type of program that a president would launch to curry favor with independent voters that he desperately needs to win re-election?

No. And there are just so many events and policies like this that you start to wonder: Is Obama throwing in the towel on his re-election in a deep psychological way?

It could very well be. It may not even be that deep. He may just be giving up.

Look at the way he pranced around Hawaii in his short sleeves and playing golf for the 90^th time of his presidency while his wife burned up 15,000 gallons of jet fuel flying off a few days early for vacation, like Evita Peron. (By the way, the plane will burn up as much on the return trip. Where’s Al Gore to flip his wig over this obvious planet-killing waste?)

Doesn’t this all seem inordinately arrogant and clumsy PR-wise as America suffers in the cold without jobs and with less and less hope with each passing day of the Obama administration?

Yes. So what gives?

Answer: It may very well be Obama enjoying his final presidential perks as he prepares to be run out of office. After all, Empress Michelle has let it be known that she is not happy in the White House – because she is not happy anywhere.

Look at this shocking statistic from CNN in an essay entitled ‘Have the youth given up on Obama’? (with italics added for emphasis):

In 2008, the youth vote helped sweep Barack Obama into office. Americans 18-29 spread the word on social media, energized fundraising and went to the polls.

…The 18-29 vote is up for grabs in 2012 because youth can’t afford cars to put bumper stickers on and those t-shirts are worn out from too many days sitting on the couch unemployed.

The sobering reality: just 55.3 percent of Americans between 16 and 29 have jobs. And earlier this year, Americans’ student loan debt surpassed credit card debt for the first time ever.

Imagine that – 45% unemployment in one of Obama’s most dependable voting blocs. This is a disaster…

And don’t think that Obama’s all-smiles, all-confident public persona does not understand what is happening. Behind the scenes reality sank in long ago, that this guy is in over his head. That grey hair tells the tale… The numbers in almost every part of the electorate are all running strongly against this president.

And don’t think that the hard-core left-wing political hacks who put Obama in office are not following all this closely. This is their entire life’s work and they are frightened to death not just about what seems to happening to Obama, but what could happen to the whole Democrat party. Remember that Obama’s economic team abandoned ship en masse in order to distance themselves from him and his policies.

This is why some very vocal and prominent Democrats and liberal commentators are suggesting that Obama step down – so as to sacrifice Obama while trying to save the bigger socialist agenda by avoiding a Democrat rout.

But he can’t really step down because this man’s massive ego is on the line, an ego that will be completely deflated after his defeat this coming November.

Or will it? After all, Obama has achieved what he set out to do – he has given us a massive, unwieldy and unaffordable socialist health-care plan while shifting as much wealth as possible to unions, the so-called ‘poor’ and others on the political left. Meanwhile he has gutted the private economy so as to de-fund all the people he has despised all this life – capitalists, middle class people, self-reliant people, white America, rural America and anyone else who traditionally votes Republican.

And we must remember what Obama said right from the start; that he would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.

And he knows that second terms are highly problematic – Bush and the Iraq war; Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; Nixon and Watergate.

And after the public savaging that he has been taking over the economy, he knows it could get much worse.

So he may well be accepting the fact that retirement may not be such a bad idea rather than getting mired down in four more years. After all, the odds are pretty good that both the House and Senate will be in Republican hands after next November.

And what would Obama do after the White House?

You just wait. Obama is going to be Bill Clinton on steroids. This guy is going to cash in so big that it ain’t funny. And his wife can’t wait either. She LOVES those million-dollar vacations and $40,000 diamond bracelets but apparently hates all the trappings of the White House. She considers them to be merely traps.

And outside of the White House Michelle won’t have to wonder things like “All this just for a flag?” which is what she is alleged to have said watching a military flag-folding ceremony.

Yes, indeed, Michelle, all this just for a flag. For this country that you have hated all your life.

Imagine what it is like behind the scenes with her. Obama probably is anxious to be somewhere where he does not have to act like everything is peachy with Mrs. Stalin either. They are not a happy couple, rest assured. Because she is not a happy camper.

Obama also is seeing Mitt Romney breathing down his neck and Romney’s good polling numbers. And unlike the defeatist John McCain, Romney is aggressively hurling rhetorical thunderbolts at Obama every few days – about his golf, about his vacation, about his policies.

Still many Republicans are not getting the message. They have bought into the idea that Obama has a good chance of being re-elected. Because they actually believe what the media say – that Obama is a popular president whom the public secretly admires.

Nonsense. Imagine if a Republican president had the horrible polls that Obama does, like Bush did in 2006 and 2008 when the Democrats made big gains?

Yes, now the picture is clearer.

For Republicans not to see the potential here is quite incomprehensible. But then again Republicans and conservatives are not really overtly political animals in the first place – after all, conservatives want government reduced. Meanwhile the Democrat party is based solely on having political power.

And those with the power in the White House now are seeing something very disturbing on the horizon. And this president may be acting out a scenario long before it even happens – whether he knows it or not.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won an expected victory in the crucial New Hampshire primary. With 39.6% of the vote, Romney can claim front-runner status after winning the Iowa caucuses as well.

The big surprise was the strong showing by Utah governor Jon Huntsman who had skipped Iowa and focused on New Hampshire. He came in third with 17% of the vote. Meanwhile Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum got 10% and 9% respectively, with Santorum’s Big Momentum from his almost-victory in Iowa washed away. Gingrich can only be disappointed with his showing after leading the field just six short weeks ago.

Texas governor Rick Perry barely registered in New Hampshire.

Romney gave a very hard-hitting victory speech saying:

“We remember when Barack Obama came to New Hampshire four years ago.  He promised to bring people together. He promised to change the broken system in Washington. He promised to improve our nation. Today, we are faced with the disappointing record of a failed president. …The middle class has been crushed. Nearly 24 million of our fellow Americans are still out of work, struggling to find work, or have just stopped looking. The median income has dropped 10% in four years. Soldiers returning from the front lines are waiting in unemployment lines. Our debt is too high and our opportunities too few. …Over the last six months, I’ve listened to anxious voices in town meetings and visited with students and soldiers. In break rooms and living rooms, I’ve heard stories of families getting by on less, of carefully planned retirements now replaced by jobs at minimum wage. But even now, amidst the worst economy since the Great Depression, I’ve rarely heard a refrain of hopelessness. …Americans know that our future is brighter and better than these troubled times. …We know that the future of this country is better than 8 or 9% unemployment. It is better than $15 trillion in debt. It is better than the misguided policies and broken promises of the last three years – and the failed leadership of one man. The president has run out of ideas. Now, he’s running out of excuses.”

Good for Romney. This is the type of blunt language that will bring Obama down. Republicans no longer can play Mr. Nice Guy politics and be cowed by the Democrat/media mantra that Americans don’t want to hear any rough language. Ronald Reagan won a landslide over Jimmy Carter with the same type of strong commentary.

I traveled to New Hampshire on primary day to follow the pulse of the campaign. The first thing I noted on the drive in on Route 101 from the west was the large number of Huntsman signs. Obviously Huntsman did in New Hampshire what Rick Santorum did in Iowa – he focused his energies there.

I saw only two Rick Perry signs, but many Romney and Santorum signs. And the Ron Paul signs mostly were large, were sometimes planted on overpasses and often were home-made including several that said ‘Ron Paul – Revolution’ In short Ron Paul is not a real conservative but he is a danger to America. Many of his most rabid supporters are extremist college students who favor Paul’s drug legalization plan.

At the Webster School polling place near downtown Manchester, Gingrich and Romney each showed up for a visit. Ten Obama supporters did too. They were all black and very belligerent and I heard one say that she came from Washington DC. Which makes you wonder: Why can’t Obama find just ten supporters in New Hampshire? They infiltrated the crowd and started shouting “Four More Years!” And so the Republicans began to intersperse the reply “Of debt!” with the chant. (“Four more years!” – “Of debt!”)

Gingrich supporter Charlie Spano said that Romney was “bleeding” voters and predicted that Gingrich would do better than expected and will bounce back in South Carolina. The idea that Romney was rapidly losing support in New Hampshire was widespread, but ultimately unfounded.

Gingrich was literally swarmed by media like a circular rugby scrum. I had never seen such a thing. He and his wife could barely move as this mob moved in a big aimless circle. Gingrich made some statements and left. Few at the polling place ever saw him except possibly for his white hair. The media had completely taken over.

Romney’s bus arrived shortly thereafter. It said ‘Conservative’ ‘Businessman’ and ‘Leader’ on it. These are three things that many primary voters are looking for.

While Gingrich and his wife looked very proper, Romney and his wife, son and daughter-in-law looked very relaxed like a J Crew ad. It was a stark contrast. The Romneys also were swarmed such that Mrs. Romney almost could not get into the waiting limo for exit.

Meanwhile Huntsman supporters tipped their signs back and forth chanting “Flip Flop!” at Romney supporters.

The ‘occupy’ kooks were camped out in the public square across from the big Radisson Hotel in Manchester where most of the major media were staying and working from. One ‘occupy’ sign said ‘Want Smaller Government? Abolish Prisons, The Military, Police, Government Contracts’

Really?! Enough said. Expect these people to be all over spouting this kind of extreme radicalism throughout the election year.

Visiting New Hampshire during primary season and especially on primary day is like going back stage at a rock festival. You get to see many major players in both the media and politics – Dan Rather looking old and tired walking to lunch with a small entourage, Andrea Mitchell from NBC, New Hampshire Democrat governor John Lynch stopping by the polling place and chatting with local folks, familiar faces from C-Span, CNN, Fox etc. The sexy young conservative commentator SE Cupp looked delightful in her skin-tight leather pants doing a video roundtable with some New Hampshire Tea Partiers in the Radisson lobby.

Meanwhile senator Santorum did a live radio interview from Radio Row on the second floor of the Radisson, which attracted a crowd; governor Huntsman showed up for some brief radio spots; Minnesota governor Pawlenty posed for pictures in the lobby while a small group of locals buttonholed Bob Schieffer for a quick photo.

CBS had the biggest media presence there – a massive glassed-in portable studio built into a trailer truck that expanded out on hydraulics. Many gawkers stood around watching the live evening news broadcast.

I would like to give a shout out to a great patriot, Christopher V. Hill, who was on the ballot in New Hampshire but who registered only under ‘Other’ He will be on the Arizona primary ballot and on the Maine caucus ballot. Hill is a Desert Storm fighter pilot veteran who now is an airline pilot. He is a good conservative who wants to focus attention on veterans’ issues. Good luck to this fine man. His website is hill2012.com

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

The Democrat party had another bombshell dropped on it when incumbent Democrat US senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska announced that he will not seek re-election in 2012 after two terms in Washington.

Nelson is considered one of the last “moderate Democrats” serving a relatively conservative  Midwestern state. But Nelson was hit with a trainload of bad press when, in 2010, he accepted what came to be known infamously as the Cornhusker Kickback, a huge federal handout to his state, in exchange for his support for the ObamaCare legislation.

Thus Nelson already was considered vulnerable in the election of 2012. And considering that one of his chief challengers is conservative Republican Don Stenberg, Nelson surely saw the handwriting on the wall.

Stenberg was a featured speaker at the RedState gathering in Charleston last summer. He is a professional, courteous and highly intelligent man.

Stenberg is a model of Midwestern conservatism, perseverance and decorum. A rural kid who went on to both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School (graduating both in 1974(!))  Stenberg has campaigned repeatedly for office in Nebraska and often has come out on the short end. Wikepedia.org reports:

‘In 1978, Stenberg ran for Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska, coming in fourth in the Republican primary with just 13% of the vote. …(Stenberg) first ran for Nebraska Attorney General in 1986, but lost in the Republican primary to incumbent Robert Spire 53%-47%… Stenberg first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996 …Initially seen as the frontrunner, he was defeated by business executive Chuck Hagel 62%-38%…. After being re-elected Attorney General in 1998, Stenberg again ran for the U.S. Senate in 2000. He won the six candidate primary with 50% of the vote. In one of the closest elections in Nebraska history, Nelson defeated Stenberg 51%-49% ^… In 2006, Stenberg launched his third bid for the U.S. Senate. Once again, an early frontrunner, he was defeated (in the primary) by former Ameritrade chief operating officer Pete Ricketts 48%-38%.’

But wikipedia.org also reports:

‘In 1979, he was named as Legal Counsel to Republican Governor of Nebraska Charles Thone. Don has also served as Director of the Governor’s Policy Research Office, Assistant to the Governor, and Director of the Department of Administrative Services… In 1990, he ran for Attorney General again. In the Republican primary, he won with a plurality of 38%. In the general election, he defeated Democrat Gene Crump 54%-46%. He won re-election in 1994 (67%) and 1998 (68%)…. In 2010, Stenberg ran for Nebraska State Treasurer…. He won the primary over state Senator Tony Fulton 52%-28% and won the general election with 73% of the vote.’

So Obviously Don Stenberg is a man who has been on both sides of the electoral coin. And his obvious intelligence and drive are big assets as he seeks the US Senate in a fourth try.

And with an unpopular Democrat president in the White House and a possible Republican “wave” coming, Stenberg is certain to have a leg up in his long quest. And considering a very close loss in 2000 and some impressive victories before and since, he may be due for his place in Washington at a time when he is needed more than ever.

Stenberg has been married 39 years and has four children.

For us conservatives, Stenberg would be a great addition to the US Senate. His website  offers an array of great ideas. Here are some excerpts:

*Federal spending is out of control and must be cut. Too many Republicans from around the country have gone to Washington saying they would cut spending and reduce the size of government and then done the exact opposite. That’s why some of those Republicans lost their elections in 2006 and 2008. We can’t afford to have a Republican nominee in Nebraska who says he will restrain spending, but is a person who will not actually do it.

I have a proven record of restraining government spending. As Nebraska’s State Treasurer, I asked the Nebraska Legislature to cut my budget by 13% for each of the next two fiscal years. When I was Nebraska’s Attorney General, I operated the Nebraska Attorney General’s office on the third smallest budget in the nation.

*We need to greatly strengthen our border security to prevent terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, and illegal immigrants from entering the United States. And we should provide for levels of legal immigration that will meet our economic needs, and be consistent with the social needs of our country.

*I am opposed to cap and trade. The climate of the Earth has repeatedly warmed and cooled for thousands of years. As recently as the early 1970s, climate scientists warned of mass global cooling if governments did not take drastic action.

The evidence is inconclusive as to whether the activities of man, specifically the use of fossil fuels, have a major impact on the Earth’s climate. Indeed, the use of fossil fuels simply returns carbon dioxide that was once in the atmosphere back into the atmosphere.

Imposing massive tax increases on energy consumption or limiting our energy development through cap and trade, will further depress our economy and increase unemployment. This is far too high a price to pay in response to an unproven theory of what might cause the climate of the earth to change in the future

*I am proud to have received A or A+ ratings from the NRA in all my previous elections for supporting the 2nd Amendment and our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

*I have been endorsed by all Nebraska right-to-life organizations in all previous elections. I defended Nebraska’s ban on partial birth abortion all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and personally argued Stenberg v. Carhart in support of the ban on partial birth abortions. As Nebraska’s Attorney General, I joined a “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Washington’s and New York’s statutes banning assisted suicide.

Two Supreme Court cases… Very impressive. Don Stenberg is a man of real substance, not a hollow political shell like so many power-seekers in Washington. Keep an eye on this good conservative during 2012.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

There were two Republican presidential debates over the weekend in New Hampshire leading up to Tuesday’s crucial primary, an ABC News/Yahoo debate on Saturday evening and an NBC News/Facebook debate Sunday morning. Both featured liberal moderators asking sometimes accusatory questions of the GOP candidates.

David Gregory, who hosted the NBC debate, was especially rude, often cutting off the candidates with a curt “All right…” It was totally unprofessional and an example of what we can expect in the coming election year from the mainstream Media Left.

The NBC debate, however, was more substantive but with Gregory asking at one point not “What will you do about the budget?” as he would ask a Democrat but rather he asked, “Name three areas (of budget cuts) where Americans will feel real pain”. This is the type of negative phrasing aimed at Republicans that we will see until election day.

The candidates all showed spine in their responses except Utah governor Jon Huntsman who kicked the budget-cut question down the road, only talking about “means testing” Social Security, i.e., only upper-income people will see cuts. This is pure political cowardice in light of the massive funding crises in SS. Huntsman then went on to say in a statement about energy that we must “disrupt the one-product (oil) monopoly”. This is anti-petroleum liberalism unmasked. Huntsman should be ignored.

Governor Romney accused Huntsman of being a product of Barack Obama, who appointed Huntsman ambassador to China. Romney said, “You were, the last two years, implementing the policies of this administration in China. The rest of us on this stage were doing our best to get Republicans elected across the country and stop the policies of this president from being put forward.”

According to the polls there is not likely to be a big surprise in Tuesday’s primary. Mitt Romney seems to be holding an insurmountable lead and for good reason. He was governor of next-door Massachusetts for 4 years; he has a vacation home in New Hampshire; and he has been politically organizing New Hampshire for five years – since his first presidential run which in effect began in January 2007 when he left the Massachusetts governor’s office.

And this weekend’s debates before the crucial primary showed a surprisingly strong conservative bent in Romney who said he supports a federal Constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman – something that would be extremely difficult to implement – and that he believed that the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision was flawed and that he supports overturning it.

“Frankly it made me more conservative as time has gone on,” Romney said about his evolution from some liberal views. Many conservatives do not believe him, but the fact is that people do indeed change. Because these are two genuinely conservative stands that Romney will not be able to walk back in the general election. And they are no real surprise. Mormons are generally socially conservative people. The Mormon Church was a strong backer of California’s traditional-marriage Proposition 8.

The Saturday night ABC debate did not even get around to asking about job creation until 75 minutes in. And then the tenor of the question was that somehow infrastructure repair of roads and bridges was going to be a key to economic growth. This is the Obama template. Romney wisely explained that fixing the infrastructure does not create economic growth, that private investment does.

This question proves how biased these Media Left debate commentators are. For instance the very first audience question to be plastered on the big screen inside the debate hall on Saturday night was a taunt of those opposed to homosexual marriage. That more than 10 minutes of this debate centered on homosexual marriage and contraception is a travesty when terrorism and illegal immigration were not even discussed and when the economy is the central issue on most voters’ minds.

Texas governor Rick Perry shocked many on Saturday evening when he called for sending US troops back to Iraq, which was immediately maligned by many commentators and internet commenters. Yet Perry is technically correct – Obama’s withdrawal appears to be throwing Iraq to the lions, negating all of America’s hard-fought victories in blood and treasure. Perry also spoke out strongly in favor of a balanced budget amendment and a part-time US Congress which is part of the evolving discussion among Americans about further limiting government. A few years ago this idea never would have been spoken aloud. That Perry is saying it is a true sign of the times and a good sign too.

Romney stood up well in the debates. There were some tough challenges to Romney as the front runner, but the mass attacks never really materialized showing that perhaps Romney’s nomination is becoming more and more an expected outcome – or at least that a win in New Hampshire certainly is.

Romney was confident and suffered no gaffes. Once again he explained his role at his firm Bain Capital. And for the tens of millions of voters who still believe in our free enterprise system Romney clearly explains how free markets work to provide the most liberty and prosperity.

He explained that our capitalist system is risk-based and that some companies need to be downsized to be saved, which is what Bain sometimes does. But when he explained that companies that Bain had invested in had created a net plus 100,000 jobs, some fact checkers immediately jumped on the figure because they do not want Romney to have any positive media.

In the Sunday debate, when the candidates were asked in another accusatory question if heating oil subsidies should be cut, Romney wisely and bluntly discussed the other side of the issue – that the federal bureaucracy is consuming much of the wealth that could be helping those in need, and that many of these programs must be block-granted to states.

Rick Santorum had a bounce coming out of his almost-win in Iowa but still lags far behind Romney in New Hampshire polls. Santorum is carrying the conservative banner but was criticized as a Washington insider for his votes in favor of Bush’s Medicare prescription drug program, of No Child Left Behind and for his work as a lobbyist.

Santorum took on the gay marriage issue in a highly publicized outing in New Hampshire on Friday. He explained why he believed in traditional marriage and was booed by a handful of college students and it was all over the national news. Yet 70% of Americans are essentially “booing” Obama policies every day according to some polls, a fact that the same media are conveniently ignoring.

Santorum was strong on Sunday morning, saying that “poverty is not a disability” and describing the ways in which liberals believed that federal welfare reform passed in 1995 would be “the end of the world” but that it was not.

Santorum also supports block-granting of federal programs to the states. He also was ambushed with more gay rights questions which he answered with certainty. This ongoing focus on the very minor issue of homosexuality showed more media bias.

In a broadside at Romney, Santorum charged that the nation doesn’t need a CEO, which was a critique of Romney’s private-sector experience, but said that America needs a leader who has vision. Said Santorum: “The commander in chief of this country isn’t a CEO. It’s someone who has to lead. Being the president is not a CEO. You can’t direct… members of Congress and members of the Senate as to how you do things. You’ve got to lead and inspire.”

Santorum is expected to do better in the more conservative South Carolina primary than in New Hampshire.

Newt Gingrich took the marginal issue of homosexual marriage and turned it to his advantage. He called the endless media drumbeat in support of homosexual rights a form of “secular bigotry” and “anti-Christian bigotry”.

And it is about time that a national figure started to expose this fact. Good for Gingrich. We hope to see more of this on the national level as conservatives ascend in the coming years. The gay lobby is doing everything it can to marginalize genuine Christian faith in America, working hand-in-hand with hard-left atheist activists.

Gingrich was strong in every field of questions and toned down the vitriol that he had aimed at Romney after Iowa. He seemed upbeat and positive. He said that Medicare and Medicaid “in theft alone” are wasting $100 billion a year. This is certainly true. Good for Newt. He should become a federal overseer of these wasteful programs in the next presidential administration if he himself is not elected president.

But Gingrich did take a big shot at Romney, saying, “I’m very much for free enterprise. .?.?. I’m not nearly as enamored of a Wall Street model where you can flip companies, you can go in and have leveraged buyouts, you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers”, referring to Bain Capital.

Romney talked about how a nation like America that ends up building on the model of “European welfare states” is going to fail. This type of blunt language is more of what we need and Romney has been bold in making such statements as have several of the candidates. This shows that Republicans are talking much more directly and courageously than in the past, helped by the fact of Europe’s collapse. This kind of honesty will win the White House.

The issue of congressman Ron Paul must be discussed. He looked like the classic rumpled but wise old man with conservative ideas. He said on NBC that government subsidies are “bad economic policy and bad moral policy”. This is good strong language.

But it is important to remember that Ron Paul is no conservative. He is a libertarian who is supported largely by a rabid base of college students who favor Paul’s call for drug legalization. Meanwhile racist statements in Paul’s own newsletter 20 years ago don’t seem to be bothering the media, along with his call for draconian budget cuts.

Because Ron Paul is the pebble in the Republican shoe. He is dividing the electorate and causing turmoil in the primary with some of his ultra-conservative views and incendiary talk of major military withdrawals from all over the world along with other foreign policy stances that Newt Gingrich calls “dangerous”.

Ron Paul is a shill candidate. The media love him just like they loved McCain when McCain was ripping George Bush. But if Paul were ever to become the nominee (he won’t, but hypothetically) the media would chew him up.

Paul even said in the NBC debate that “conservatives are not all that well known for protecting privacy and civil liberties.”

If this does not reveal the real Ron Paul, nothing does. This is an abhorrent slander of conservatism and the opposite of the truth. Conservatism is the ultimate expression of personal and civil liberties and individual freedom.

Indeed Ron Paul is dangerous.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has suspended her presidential campaign after a poor showing in the Iowa Caucuses. Meanwhile the rest of the field has headed to New Hampshire with former US senator Rick Santorum showing Big Momentum after his almost-win in Iowa and Mitt Romney planning to win the Granite State after years of plotting.

Meanwhile an angry Newt Gingrich may be taking his campaign forth with an aggressive anti-Romney slant. Gingrich placed fourth in Iowa after leading many polls just a few short weeks ago.

Romney ran many of the anti-Gingrich ads in Iowa, causing Newt’s vote to collapse. A huge proportion of the political ads in Iowa – 80% of all the ads according to one news source – were negative ads aimed at Gingrich since he was the leader going in.

Gingrich said about New Hampshire, “We are not going to go out and run nasty ads, but I do reserve the right to tell the truth. If the truth seems negative, that may be more a comment on (Mitt Romney’s) record than the nature of politics.”

Gingrich also said about Ron Paul who came in third in Iowa: “His views on foreign policy, I think, are stunningly dangerous for the survival of the United States.” Many others agree.

The loss of congresswoman Bachmann is a sad note for the campaign. She is one of the smartest people on the political scene today, someone who is genuinely concerned about the direction our nation is taking. After all she is a federal tax lawyer as well as a high elected official… and a mother of five.

Bachmann even has sensibly called for a policy under which every citizen must pay taxes including the poor “even if it’s only ten dollars”.

Amen. It’s about time. And she has called for the outright shutdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These are some of the revolutionary ideas that are emanating from the GOP in light of the Obama depression, bottomless handouts for the so-called ‘poor’ and out-of-control public spending.

Bachmann is outspoken about the leftward drift of America, referring to Obama’s policies as “socialist”. She said in her speech suspending her campaign that “The evening that Obamacare was passed, I believed firmly what Congress and Obama had done endangered the very survival of the United States of America. 2012 is our last chance and our only chance to repeal Obamacare. It violates our fundamental liberties as Americans (and) must be stopped. I’ll fight for this country. …(2012) may be the last election to turn the country around before we go down the road to socialism.”

Meanwhile Santorum’s record now is coming under new scrutiny including his vote in support of Bush’s Medicare prescription drug program. And while Santorum is generally a good conservative, that vote is going to immediately tarnish his standing among Tea Partiers and others on the right.

But here is Curt Levey of the Committee for Justice (committeeforjustice.org) writing glowingly about Santorum and the judiciary:

Rick Santorum has not been in a position to nominate judges but he had an outstanding track record on the judges issue as a U.S. Senator. We are confident that his approach to judicial nominations will reflect the passionate commitment to constitutionalism demonstrated by that record.

Writing in 2005, Third Branch Conference chairman Manny Miranda described Santorum’s leadership on the judges issue:

‘No Republican senator has done more to make the confirmation of John Roberts possible, because no Republican senator is more responsible for making the judiciary issue a national electoral winner for Republicans, or for making colleagues understand its significance to constituents. No GOP senator did more to lay the groundwork for … effectively ending the Democratic filibusters. … The end result of Mr. Santorum’s strategy was a net GOP gain of six seats in two elections.’

Santorum’s efforts to lay the groundwork began with his organization of the 2003 ”anti-filibuster,” which focused public attention on Democrats’ abuse of the judicial filibuster by keeping the Senate in session for 40 straight hours over the course of two nights. In November 2006, the New York Times agreed with Miranda’s assessment of the senator’s leadership, calling Santorum the “chief Republican proponent of underlining Democratic opposition to Mr. Bush’s judicial choices.”

A few weeks earlier, Santorum became the first senator to sign the Fair Judiciary Oath, committing him to work for “a fair confirmation process.” In addition to CFJ and the Third Branch Conference, the sponsoring Fair Judiciary Oath Coalition included the American Center for Law & Justice, the American Conservative Union, the Family Research Council, the Judicial Confirmation Network, and other groups.

After leaving the Senate, Santorum spoke out against the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Citing Sotomayor’s statement about the “better conclusion[s]” of a “wise Latina” judge, her controversial decision in the New Haven firefighters reverse discrimination case, and her claim that an appeals court is “where policy is made,” Santorum explained that “Bias, elitism, the politics of separating people into classes and racial and ethnic pigeonholes are not what one would expect from a nominee of a president who promised to get us past that.”

Meanwhile Rick Perry’s future is in doubt after a poor Iowa showing. That is unfortunate. Perry is a good man who was hurt by a few minor debate gaffes. Texas is thriving under Perry’s governorship and that is infinitely more important than a couple of verbal slip-ups. But Perry is young. He might run again for the White House in the future.

Does Santorum have the time to do in New Hampshire what he did in Iowa?

No. He is said to have spent 100 days in Iowa campaigning on a shoestring but through an aggressive person-to-person strategy. He now has six days in New Hampshire, although he has spent much time there throughout the season.

Under the old campaign schedule when the New Hampshire primary came in February, Santorum might have had a chance to replicate Iowa somewhat.

Then again, on the shorter schedule, Santorum has the luxury of coasting into New Hampshire on his strong Iowa showing without a lot of time for his image to be questioned or attacked in ads by Romney or the Republican Establishment that considers Santorum too conservative.

In addition, he is enjoying a spike in fundraising after his great showing in Iowa.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

Rick Santorum’s late surge and very strong second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses is a jolt for the Republican primary process. “Game on!” indeed.

For months we conservatives have all said that “We love Rick Santorum but he just isn’t getting any traction”. That now has changed. He is now center stage.

Indeed the race up until Iowa, without a single vote cast, elevated and then cast aside people like Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich.

Meanwhile both Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama launched their presidential quests with a surprise win in Iowa. Is Rick Santorum about to do the same with his almost-victory?

Time will tell. Each of the previous challengers to ostensible front runner Mitt Romney has stumbled. Santorum, on the other hand, has been lurking in the field and playing an Iowa Strategy by visiting, by Santorum’s own count, more than 380 town hall meetings. That is also called a Shoe Leather Strategy with hardly any money available or spent. The stories of Santorum’s penniless campaign were legend.

Now Santorum’s gamble has paid off. And this could be the start of something very big. Because voters will see a man without much money but with a lot of heart. And with America in the straits it is in, that could mean a great deal.

We must not be too quick to pin our hopes on Santorum, however, or dismiss Romney who is probably going to win New Hampshire by a hefty margin.

But what if all the Anyone But Romney voters now decide in New Hampshire to flock to Santorum and abandon Perry or Bachmann or Gingrich? Then Santorum could win. Because the undecideds are a big crowd in the Republican primaries this year and the conservative vote is widely split.

Santorum, a two-term US senator from Pennsylvania who lost re-election in 2006 in the Democrat landslide of that year, now has what George HW Bush called “Big Mo” in the 1980 campaign after Bush defeated Ronald Reagan in Iowa.

Suddenly people are going to want to meet him. Suddenly conservatives will perk up and say, “This is the guy we have been looking for and he is shining bright just when we need him.”

After all Santorum’s conservative credentials and his personal story (he and his wife have seven children and he is a pro-life Christian) are very impressive. He has not stumbled in the debates and he does not have the checkered past of a Newt Gingrich.

In 1980, George HW Bush was the Establishment Republican choice as Mitt Romney is today. But in 1980 conservative Ronald Reagan went on to win the presidency.

Are we going to see 1980 all over again with Rick Santorum suddenly swooping down and collecting all those undecided Republican primary voters and grabbing the nomination and going to the White House? After all Barack Obama is a very weak incumbent as Jimmy Carter was in 1980.

Time will tell. But let’s face it… going into the crucial New Hampshire primary, Santorum has rock-star status precisely when it is needed. Santorum is going to be Lady Gaga compared to Mitt Romney’s Bruce Springsteen – younger, fresher, more exciting to this year’s primary voters.

And a prayer answered for many religious conservatives. Evangelicals and other Christians could flock to Santorum and could easily tip primaries to him.

This can only be causing major heartburn among the Republican Establishment… again. Like the heartburn they were having over Newt Gingrich’s surge.

Then again, Santorum may fall back after some scrutiny. But stalwart conservatives may not be willing to take any nonsense from the Bush wing of the party, the wing that gave us John McCain and ultimately Obama and that is going to start launching attacks on Santorum.

With an 88 rating out of 100 from the American Conservative Union, Santorum may be just what the political right is seeking in this race – a real conservative who is willing to fight for all of the agenda, not just part of it.

Romney has been playing a conservative game since he joined the 2012 fight. Now New Hampshire will show whether he is being perceived as the real deal or if his mask is going to be ripped off by a resurgent conservative right. He is expected to win New Hampshire, but a strong showing – never mind an upset win – by Rick Santorum, could throw the whole nomination process up in the air.

And Rick Santorum could be a very strong challenger to Barack Obama. He is very smart, a good debater and just an all around solid guy.

Whether his rock-star status lasts is another question. But his Iowa Strategy certainly paid off.

Congratulations senator Santorum. Job well done…

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

Today are the Iowa Caucuses. The 2012 campaign season is kicking off.  Wow. Time sure flies. And while Newt Gingrich seemed to be challenging Mitt Romney just a month ago, the Newt bandwagon has derailed.

Iowa is a strange sort of primary – in-home caucus groups meeting across the state – that could have a big surprise like a suddenly strong showing by Rick Santorum and a win by Mitt Romney.

Romney was not expecting an Iowa victory even three weeks ago, but a victory there would shine Romney up for New Hampshire and the other states like South Carolina and Florida. And after just a month of primaries, Romney could seem like the inevitable candidate.

The positive effect of this could be that the Republicans can rally around Romney starting in March or April and start running down Obama early.

Santorum’s rise, however, comes just at the right time. He obviously has played an Iowa Strategy to a T. Both Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama were launched with Iowa victories, and Santorum has attended more than 380(!) individual town hall meetings across the state in his quest. Go Rick!!!

How has Gingrich collapsed so quickly after his big surge in November and December?

Because Newt Gingrich is a weird guy. He is very smart but perhaps one of those guys who is “too smart for his own good”. And his public image is very checkered and for a good reason. Newt too often speaks and acts off the cuff, in roundabout historical terms, or outside the bounds of comprehension and decorum.

I have always casually admired Newt. I think he would be a good president. He was effective in politics in the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Yet four years later, his own party wanted him gone.

Indeed Gingrich has been controversial from the start. What can you say about a guy who, at age 19, married his high school algebra teacher who was 26?

Indeed Newt has created many of his own image problems.

When he found himself unable to get on the Virginia primary ballot, he did not say, “It’s too bad we didn’t work harder.” He compared it to Pearl Harbor…

C’mon Newt! This is not exactly the kind of talk that leads to the White House. It is far too loose.

Romney jumped on the Pearl Harbor comment and said that Gingrich is like Lucy in the chocolate factory, a reference to an old Lucille Ball skit from the 1950s know to tens of millions of baby boomers. It was an effective piece of political repartee because it caricatured Gingrich in a lighthearted way that would make people smile. Because it aroused a comical image of Lucy on the assembly line, stuffing chocolates into her mouth in a show of old-fashioned humor. Romney obviously has a very savvy PR crew advising him.

Newt has made Republicans nervous by repeatedly praising FDR. He posed with Nancy Pelosi for a ‘global warming’ ad. He supports the individual health insurance mandate. He slammed congressman Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan. And on and on.

Yet on the other hand Newt has been strong in all the debates.  And when he said, for instance, that poor kids (i.e., referring to black kids) don’t have role models that can show them how to work, conservatives agreed with his boldness. But this is the type of blunt language that could be used against Gingrich in the general court of public opinion.

In other words, Newt seems to bounce from one extreme to the other, which is unhealthy in politics. Like hero in 1994 to zero in 1998.

Romney does not make these offhanded unequivocal statements like Gingrich does. Because Romney is very cagey in his strategy. He is being moderately aggressive but also is playing somewhat defensively and cautiously, but don’t be fooled. Every few days Romney hurls a rhetorical thunderbolt at Obama. Have you noticed?

But Gingrich has struck chords with conservatives with his proposal to make judges come before legislative panels to explain their decisions. This would be intended to rein in judicial activism and millions of us on the right have said, “That is a good idea…”

But then again some Republicans have called it a lame-brained idea that is not even Constitutional, including two former attorneys general of the United States. So there you go. Newt again is being seen as a man of perhaps one too many ideas, more a think tank than a candidate.

Newt’s multiple marriages also are working against him. It seems that he can’t just be normal in any way. And now his lavish spending on his third wife, who is much younger than he is, seems just a tad out of line with his frugal conservatism.

Newt surged to the top of the primary pack in November. It seemed that he could be the nominee. But we had seen this before with Bachmann, Perry and Cain.

Each challenger has had a fatal flaw. Bachmann is very smart but not well-known enough. Perry stumbled in the debates, but is young and could run again for the presidency. Cain was railroaded out of the campaign on unproven charges. (Where have Cain’s accusers gone, by the way?)

Now we have Gingrich who peaked and who is now sliding in the polls. And with Newt’s decline, the Republican Establishment in Washington is surely breathing a sigh of relief. They have backed Romney from the start, but for several weeks there was a dreadful feeling that Gingrich was going to win the primary but would lose the general election. Meanwhile the GOP plan was that Romney could win the general election but it seemed like he might not be able to win the primary if Gingrich stayed strong.

Well, things are back to normal now. Romney seems to be back on top. There even was a mini-stampede at a Romney campaign appearance in New Hampshire recently, adding to an aura that people want to be around him, that he is gaining presidential traction. If this keeps up, as it also happened in Iowa, that will be a good thing. There’s nothing like a little ‘buzz’ to enliven a campaign. And in case you don’t remember, the only ‘buzz’ in McCain’s 2008 campaign was… Sarah Palin.

Romney’s good looks are helping him too, while Newt seems like a caricature of a Republican – a fat white guy with a photographic memory for historical facts who doesn’t much care for blacks or other groups who do not traditionally support the GOP or partake of his scholarly world view.

After his rise there developed a chorus of nationwide anti-Newt sentiment as Republicans and conservatives became nervous. Now, however, it looks like Newt’s day in the sun may be over. And with Gingrich’s checkered past and his very uneven performance during this campaign, many people on the “right” side of the issues are breathing easier.

Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

2012 is going to be the most crucial election year in modern American history.

Fortunately Barack Obama is unlikely to be re-elected. Generally speaking the numbers against him are simply too overwhelming. But things could change. We conservatives must not become complacent or overconfident.

We must think every minute about what 2012 means in our plan to take America back from the jaws of destructive socialism. Because hard-left Democrats have taken over our nation incrementally over the past 100 years. Here are just a few of the results:

*An expanding bureaucracy of 22.5 million government workers on the local, state and federal level is strangling our economy. State and local workers alone consume more than $1 trillion in tax money for their salaries, benefits and pensions.

*Millions of handout poor live like the middle class without lifting a finger. They have not only food, clothing and shelter, but advanced medical care, cable TV, air conditioning, microwave ovens, color televisions, scooters to ride around on, and every other convenience. Meanwhile millions of taxpayers do without.

*Environmentalists control every facet of our economy and are preventing us from developing an efficient energy supply and good jobs.

*Excessive regulation, taxation and Big Government mandates are driving business and jobs from our shores.

*The American Media Left have become viciously dishonest in their manipulation of every story that comes along. They care only about promoting the Democrat agenda.

*Al Gore advocates with a straight face an absurdist end-of-the-world ‘global warming’ theory and is taken seriously by tens of millions of our citizens. As Gore accumulates a fortune estimated at $100 million.

*Ultra-wealthy Democrats like Nancy Pelosi vacation in luxury in Hawaii as Americans shiver without jobs and pay exorbitant costs for heating oil while the Democrat mantra is that “rich Republicans” are stealing everything.

The list never ends. In other words, the people who historically have done the hard work of building America are marginalized and those on the Freeloader Left get richer and fatter every day telling every lie in the book.

That is why we need more and more conservative Tea Partiers in the White House, in Congress, in state legislatures and even on town boards in order to tip the playing field away from unproductive people and back in favor of the productive citizens who are willing to work for what they have.

The signs are good. Since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, the American people have seen the face of left-wing socialism and they do not like what they see. The Republican party has made huge gains in almost every election since Obama assumed the White House. Even Obama’s own US Senate seat fell to a Republican in 2010.

But this year will be crucial as well because we conservatives are not only fighting against the Democrat Establishment but the Republican Establishment too.

No, not all Republicans in Washington have gone over to the dark side. But far too many of them are not willing to confront the Obama agenda with force, which is what is needed. Because America is like a see-saw and the Democrats are all sitting on one end and keeping the rest of us off the ground. And the only way to change that is not to agree with them, or to meet them halfway, but to oppose them forthrightly, to get the weight on our end of the see-saw.

Fortunately 17 Democrats already are retiring from the US House of Representatives this year, as opposed to only 7 Republicans. This bodes well for conservatism.

And 23 of the 33 US Senate seats up for challenge in 2012 are currently occupied by Democrats. Imagine how dispirited we conservatives would be if the figures were reversed. And this recent news adds to the fun – Democrat US Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is retiring after two terms, opening the door for conservative Don Stenberg who spoke at the RedState gathering last summer in Charleston. (I urge you to attend the 2012 gathering. It is a real big-league political experience. Watch my column later this week for a full commentary about Stenberg.)

Already there are at least a net four Senate seats that are expected to go from Democrat to Republican and probably more. A new Republican majority in the US Senate is virtually a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile the massive GOP victory in many swing states in the November 2010 election is a harbinger of good things to come.

And who is our Republican presidential nominee going to be?

It certainly looks like it will be Mitt Romney because he has followed a tried-and-true course, running in 2008, losing and then trying again like Ronald Reagan did. Because Romney truly wants to be president; his campaign is not a lark. And while several challengers have risen and fallen, Romney seems to be remaining on top, although conservatives are not warming to him.

But if he is the nominee, all conservatives must support him. Because the alternative of four more years of Obama is outright unacceptable.

Indeed Romney is talking very tough about economics and national security and has some good conservative ideas about repealing ObamaCare and reforming entitlements. He also will put people of integrity into our Justice Department and Transportation Security Administration and everywhere else in government to replace the corruption that now exists.

Is Romney a genuine conservative like Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum?

No. But he is the big figure on the presidential scene. And that is what it is. And if he is the next president, he is going to realize that conservatism is the only path to saving the nation and he will act boldly. Because our national survival is at stake and Romney will realize that his legacy is on the line too. He certainly would want to be remembered by history as a transformative Reagan-like figure and indeed he can be. He knows the score.

In fact many subjects came up in this year’s presidential debates that we conservatives have been discussing for years like eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency and replacing it with a smaller bureau; a flat tax collection system; or Michele Bachmann’s sensible proposal that “everyone must pay taxes, even the poor, even if it is only ten dollars”. She even called for the shutdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This indeed is progress. Because we must understand that we are in a long-term struggle for the survival of our nation and that 2012 is the second step in reclaiming it. 2010 was the first.

Remember that Harry Truman was talking about ObamaCare-type health legislation in the 1940s and that it took until 2010 to pass it. So we must think long term about getting our nation back.

Is it going to take us 100 years to undo what it took socialism 100 years to impose?

No. We are going to undo much of it in 20 years. Because socialism is unsustainable and sensible Americans now know it and understand it.

Perhaps the election of Barack Obama backhandedly was the best thing that could have happened to us. Because it sparked the creation of the Tea Parties and has illuminated the conservative ideas that we have been espousing all along.

Suddenly millions of people who were casually involved in politics or who have been uncommitted are seeing the common sense in what we conservatives have been urging for decades. And it sure feels good to be validated and vindicated in a way that only is just beginning.

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.

(This is a column that I wrote after the RedState gathering August 12-14, 2011. It is re-posted here for your enjoyment and enlightenment.)

The RedState event in Charleston, South Carolina last weekend was a real conservative extravaganza. RedStaters should seriously consider attending next year when the gathering is preliminarily set to be held in Florida.

The prominence of RedState.com and the RedState culture is growing, and a flurry of national media fired up Charleston. When the RedState assembly is covered by C-Span as it was last weekend, you know it is good news. Even veteran conservative columnist George Will stopped by for the presidential announcement by Texas governor Rick Perry.

The event kicked off Friday evening with appearances by three important elected officials on ‘our’ side of the issues – the dynamic new South Carolina governor Nikki Haley; US senator Jim DeMint, also of South Carolina; and the bright activist governor Rick Scott of Florida. Scott, who was elected in November 2010 like Haley and who is a product of Erickson/RedState activism, explained why he turned down federal high-speed rail funds and why his state is doing well even in the recession. Scott is a future GOP presidential candidate, rest assured.

During the day Saturday we heard from 2012 US Senate and House candidates and a jam-packed presidential announcement by a man who we can all feel confident could be the next occupant of the White House, Rick Perry.

All in all, it was real excitement for those of us on the “right” side of the issues.  And since next year’s gathering will be on the cusp of the presidential election season, it should be even better. So if you want to get a feel for national politics on the major league level, plan to attend. This is the real deal.

Erick Erickson of RedState.com kept the event flowing well, as symposia covered subjects like web activism; a South Carolina effort to replace its state income tax system with a “fair tax” sales tax collection system; and other issues like the origins of RedState.com itself. The meeting also included representatives from American Majority, Let Freedom Ring, FreedomWorks and the Heritage Action for America. Other groups like Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Coalition were represented in the lobby. All in all, a conservative dream conference.

Here are some highlights:

*Jamie Radtke, a savvy Tea Party activist from Virginia, is going to challenge for the US Senate seat being vacated in a surprise move by Democrat Jim Webb. Radtke’s 20-page handout looks like a sure-fire recipe for success and shows an extraordinary level of organization for her candidacy among Virginia conservatives. Her site is radtkeforsenate.com. Radtke resides in the Richmond area. With the shift of Virginia to the right under governor Bob McDonnell (the new chairman of the National Governors’ Association) and attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, Radtke looks like a winner.

*Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer of Indiana, is going to challenge incumbent Republican liberal Richard Lugar in the primary for Lugar’s long-held US Senate seat (since 1976). This shows the rising power of the RedState/Tea Party faction in American politics. Mourdock said that he now is supported by 74% of Indiana Republican country chairmen. This shows a real shift away from the centrist GOP establishment. Mourdock is no government lapdog, by the way. He spent 31 years in the private energy industry.

*Don Stenberg, treasurer of the state of Nebraska and a former Nebraska attorney general, is as impressive a candidate as you will ever meet for US Senate. He personally argued in the Supreme Court in favor of Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion so  he is no slouch. Stenberg is confident that he will win the seat if he wins his primary. His Democrat incumbent opponent would be Ben ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ Nelson, who is very unpopular in Nebraska these days. The website is stenbergforsenate.com Stenberg is a product of both Harvard Business School and Harvard Law but don’t think for a minute that he has been tainted by East Coast elitism. He is a common-sense heartlander through and through.

*Michael Williams, the current Texas railroad commissioner, is running for US Congress. He is part of a new generation of black conservatives that is challenging the liberal hierarchy. Williams is funny, smart and showed us his life experience from a whole different perspective. Williams talked about his “faith upbringing” and his close family ties that made him who he is. He was a Department of Justice prosecutor in the Reagan administration.

*Adam Hasner, majority leader in the Florida House, is another great conservative who will challenge Democrat Bill Nelson in Florida’s 2012 US Senate race. Ted Cruz, former solicitor general of the state of Texas and a US senate candidate from Texas, said he wants to triple the size of the Border Patrol. “The first thing any sovereign nation does is secure its border,” said Cruz. His website is tedcruz.org

*Governor Perry spoke bluntly in his announcement speech, which was covered by national media: “I’ll promise you this: I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your life as I can.” He also said: “As Americans we are not defined by class and we will never be told our place… As Americans we realize there is no taxpayer money that was not first earned by the sweat and toil of one of our citizens.” He referred to “this president’s unbridled fixation on taking more money… and giving it to a central government.” He talked about a “failed stimulus plans and other misguided economic theories… with far too many unemployed.” Referring to current economic statistics, Perry said: “That is not a recovery, that is an economic disaster”. He also said: “This president and his big spending, big government policies have prolonged our national misery, not alleviated it.”

Good for Perry. These are the type of blunt, straightforward charges that will bring down Obama. This is precisely how Ronald Reagan went after Jimmy Carter. And we know how that worked out.

Governor Haley played host to the Charleston event as the state’s leader. And if you want to meet a dynamic, well-spoken, and “profoundly decent” individual as Erickson described her, Haley is the ticket. Talking about the dichotomy between Democrat-backed obstructionist lawyers and growing businesses, Haley said plainly in her opening remarks, “It’s either lawyers or businesses… you pick.”

I spoke with Haley for several minutes about the Boeing controversy in South Carolina and she gave me straight, direct answers. If you want to meet a genuine leader with “White House” written all over her, maybe you will be lucky enough to meet Nikki Haley next year at the RedState gathering. To top it off, she’s only 39 years old…

Charleston was a great choice. It was hot outside, but the Francis Marion hotel was classy, and the food was well done and plentiful so you didn’t even have to go out. It was well worth the price of admission.

But the heat did not stop me from several tours around the town. I love to walk, and Charleston has scores of streets lined with historic homes. It was a delight for a person with a passion for early American architecture as I have. The Battery area, along the harbor, is the oldest and most historic part of town, with narrow lanes lined with the most elegant homes of all. Charleston once was one of the richest cities in the world.

On my way to the airport, I was driven by Mitch, a black man with his own limousine shuttle. Mitch was genuinely worried about the state of the nation, and I think he felt gratified that one of the hotel guests from the elegant Francis Marion was willing to take the time to engage him and was interested in his views. But that’s me. I am always interested in the ideas of the hard-working people of America.

I reassured Mitch that his own future would be secure with his own business. He then told me that he was very much concerned about too many people on the dole, including Social Security disability, and too many black males having children and not raising them but putting them on the dole as well. So Mitch thinks a lot like you and me.

As I paid him for the ride, Mitch looked at me with a question in his eyes. “You think everything is gonna be OK?” he asked me. And I said of course, that there are people like him and like me who are going to change the nation person by person, and good people like Nikki Haley who is working to change South Carolina. He seemed relieved

All in all, the RedState annual gathering was a very stimulating confluence of people, place and ideas. And there will be many more of them.

See you in 2012…

Please visit my blog at www.nikitas3.com for more conservative insights.