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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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.
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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: Let the MSM pick our presidential candidate Prematurely jump for a shiny candidate who is most unlike Obama, as to avoid #1 Candidates present as little information as needed | Read More »
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.
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.
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 | Read More »
The United States is in trouble. Here is a plan to fix it.
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 | Read More »
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 | Read More »
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.
When Chicago voters returned Pat Quinn to his job as Governor of Chicago, they knew he wanted to increase their income taxes from 3% to 4%. That’s not much for most of his supporters, who accept a government check of one sort or another. But shortly after winning reelection, he let it be known that a 33% increase was not enough, if his public sector | Read More »
Democrats kept their grip on power in the Illinois Legislature and won the governorship by the slimmest of margins, and they are going to make voters pay for it. Emboldened by his reelection, Governor Quinn and legislative allies are seizing on the lame duck session to sneak through a radical tax and spending plan the voters did not expect and would not have accepted.
I despise illogical argument, and I love my wife. But just as much, I love my culture, that sum of received practice, belief, and wisdom I have come to share, or to believe I share, with those around me. So my hair stands on end when libertarian Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway (and dozens of others, apparently) retweet self-described liberal statistician Peter Flom: If | Read More »
Is Christmas about Christ, or is it about reindeer? Why, yes. Christmas is a celebration of the virgin birth of Jesus the Christ, Y’shua the Messiah, in a manger in Bethlehem. It’s a tale of wise men (who weren’t there) and shepherds (who were). It’s also a celebration of the dead of Winter, a memory of the cold days of the Little Ice Age in | Read More »
Even liberty-loving, highly doctrinaire conservative tea partying Redstate Republicans like me have dreams of dragging our party into the light on an issue or two.
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