But while talking with people at baseball games and in the break room at work is necessary, it isn’t enough. You must also go to where people live. You must go to their doorstep.

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In the fight to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as ObamaCare, activists and legislators are faced with a basic strategic decision. Should we try to repeal or have nullified individual components of the law, or should we leave even the worst parts in place while we try to repeal the whole thing?

I have always believed in leaving the law intact, in all its unfettered malfeasance, as a way to remind American citizens, legislators, and courts just how far we have fallen. But the time has come for that strategy to change. We should start the repeal process with one of the worst features at the heart of the PPACA, the mandate that individuals buy health insurance.

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If you are a conservative in Wisconsin, you have a great opportunity Tuesday to nudge the Wisconsin Democratic Party toward more rational, pro-Wisconsin ideas

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The Greatest Orator and Most Bestest Political Wizard of All Time just said he’d like to raise taxes if reelected:

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Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) speculated Tuesday that one of the illegal immigrants covered by the proposed DREAM Act might one day become president.

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In days of yore here at Redstate, we often explored the philosophical underpinnings of conservatism, sometimes without any grounding in practical politics.  We are more or less over that now, thankfully.  But longtime Redstater Amy Miller asked me to explore what we mean when we demand free speech and free press. They are one and the same. Further, we should recognize the identical rights of amateur bloggers and professional journalists.

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Promoted from Diaries – ML

Redstate’s own ColdWarrior and Ron Robinson invited several precinct activists from around the country to sit on a panel at the recent RightOnline conference, put on by Americans for Prosperity. Our topic was the “Importance of Precinct Activism”. Below the fold you will find some more details that I didn’t include in my portion of the event, and get to see me talking.

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I don’t mean to say that this day is typical of my day as a conservative Precinct Committeeman, but they come like this sometimes. When I think about the end of the day, the beginning and middle seem like warm-up laps.

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Politicians have been trained for decades to internalize a strategy. It is the essence of the conventional wisdom: we have our voters, they have their voters, and to win we need to convince those in between.

But that strategy is flawed, and its faults have been revealed by the rise of Barack Obama and laid bare by the Tea Parties. The political environment, at least in the 2012 election cycle, will not favor candidates who chase the ephemeral middle.

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The decades of hand-wringing, lawfare, partisan and bipartisan moralizing over “torture”, and the ever-present drumbeat of criticism for the Bush administration, have all boiled down to this. Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by an American special forces assault team.

As for all of that talk about terrorists having rights, even Constitutional rights, and attempts to apply our criminal law to the battlefield, it was all meaningless. And despite having a cadre of anti-military leftists in the White House, our system worked.

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Barack Obama yesterday introduced us to the notion that the failure to collect taxes is actually government spending.  Tax cuts (or deferred increases) are just an alternate way for the government to spend money, because without the cuts it would otherwise get the added revenue. Actually the idea is as old as Caesar, but it was jarring to hear it so seamlessly encoded into the Campaigner-in-Chief‘s talking points.

Any politician who without irony calls tax loopholes and other breaks “spending” should be sent home, because they’ve become part of the problem.

But if the former sensible tax relief is now spending, did Obama give “95% of Americans” a tax cut in the Porkulus, or did he just “spend” even more?

H/T

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Despite the increase in sophistication and insight most of us have gained into politics since the 2000 election and especially with the rise of the tea parties, we’re going make one of two mistakes in 2012:

1. Let the MSM pick our presidential candidate
2. Prematurely jump for a shiny candidate who is most unlike Obama, as to avoid #1

Candidates present as little information as needed to get you to like them, and then expect you to think they agree with you on everything else. And while they may deliver outright falsehoods, over the course of a lifetime in the public eye, the truth about them cannot be hidden.

In this post I’ll try to lay out some principles, based on the process of vetting candidates , by which we can choose a presidential candidate on purpose, with our eyes open, as befits free citizens in a democratic republic.

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Dear Mr. Obama:

There are two basics you would have learned in even the lowest ranks of military leadership. Perhaps your generals have expressed this advice. When dealing with troops, you don’t mess their mail, and you don’t mess with their pay.

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As the latest demonstration of his lack of economic depth, President Obama put forth a series of falsehoods in the form of a press conference on Friday. Both Jazz Shaw at Hot Air and he indispensible Jeff Dunetz pointed out the tsunami of falsehoods, so Go Read Those.

But the president also used his typically bad logic to push his green agenda.

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Five years ago this month I began posting on Redstate.  I think it was already redstate.com then, although I may have come in on the tail of redstate.org.  Erick was just another user; talented, but no more than many others present.  He was still practicing law then, you see. 

Everyone had these wicked cool usernames, like ‘Tacitus’, ‘Plato’ and ‘Nick Danger’. Since I loved the classics growing up, as on a whim I chose the name ‘Socrates’.  One by one they all switched or moved on. 

But one can’t post as Socrates and be silly, or argue badly.  It wouldn’t do.  There was something about seeing that name there that made me want to write a certain way.

And it has to end.

The site drama over the last few days hit me hard.

To be honest, I didn’t particularly like Vassar’s writing style. But it was worth wading through it for the conservativvy goodness of his content.

It stunned me that he was summarily banned without explanation.  Was I next?  As it happened my browser or the site had a glitch that morning and said my username didn’t exist.  I persevered and found that I could log in, but the thought had been planted.

The more I thought about things, the more difficult it was for me to continue on as if nothing had happened.  I was determined not to withdraw, but I didn’t feel like writing anything. 

So this step occurred to me, and it seems that yes, it’s time to put away this attachment to the old days.

The United States is in trouble.  Here is a plan to fix it.

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Looking for the President’s FY2012 budget, I noticed right away the inanity dripping from the first paragraph on the White House propaganda page for it:

Having emerged from the worst recession in generations, the President has put forward a plan to rebuild our economy and win the future by out-innovating, out-educating, and out-building our global competitors and creating the jobs and industries of tomorrow. But we cannot rebuild our economy and win the future if we pass on a mountain of debt to our children and grandchildren. We must restore fiscal responsibility, and reform our government to make it more effective, efficient, and open to the American people.

I decided that paragraph needed commentary.

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If you make fun of conservatives on the basis of their conservative beliefs, chances are you ain’t one.

If you identify yourself on the basis of a trait that you acknowledge not to be conservative, chances are you are not one, as well.

If you actively encourage others to hold a viewpoint that you acknowledge not to be a conservative one, you’re really on thin ice.

If you try to change the definition of conservatism to include something you acknowledge it doesn’t include, you simply aren’t a conservative.

Oh, and one other thing.

Reading is fundamental.

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Now it seems that John Boehner has endorsed Maria Cino for the Republican National Committee chairmanship. There is a problem with that endorsement.

If others follow suit, it will destroy the Republican Party.

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