Rubio now leads Crist 60-28, including a staggering 71-17 lead with conservatives. Crist has a 49-36 advantage with party moderates, but they account for just 31% of likely primary voters compared to 65% who describe themselves as conservative.

To read the full report click here.

Such is the finding of a new major survey released Monday by leading Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, top party operative James Carville, and the folks at the progressive national security think tank Third Way, which they are framing as “a wake-up call for President Obama, his party, and progressives on national security.”

To read the full article click here.

The Democracy Corps-Third Way survey released Monday finds that by a 10-point margin — 51 percent to 41 percent — Americans think the standing of the U.S. dropped during the first 13 months of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

“This is surprising, given the global acclaim and Nobel peace prize that flowed to the new president after he took office,” said pollsters for the liberal-leaning organizations.

On the national security front, a massive gap has emerged, with 50 percent of likely voters saying Republicans would likely do a better job than Democrats, a 14-point swing since May. Thirty-three percent favored Democrats.

To read the full article click here.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Ohio voters finds Kasich leading Strickland 49% to 38%. Six percent (6%) prefer another candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.

Last month, Kasich held a six-point lead – 47% to 41% – over Strickland, mirroring the 47% to 40% lead he had in early January. These results also show little change from the first survey of the contest conducted in December.

To read the full report click here.

Though Pat Toomey is pro-life, his campaign focuses on jobs, business, regulation, and the free market. Back at the RedState Gathering in August (the next one will be announced very shortly), Pat Toomey gave me a copy of his book, The Road to Prosperity.

I read it then and, frankly, got sidetracked. But in thinking about a way forward for the GOP, I think Pat Toomey really presents a credible platform in his book. It is actually a very readable book.

To read the full article click here.

His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters’ independence and ability to make decisions for themselves.

To read the full article click here.

“These pro-life Democratic representatives face a stark choice: either they are heroes in the face of tremendous pressure, or they are the ultimate betrayers,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “In these districts, voters reflect national pro-life trends, and they expect their values to be translated into public policy. This intensity will translate on Election Day. That means pro-life members must vote no on the senate bill, or any bill that allows abortion funding under the guise of ‘healthcare.’ The Susan B. Anthony List will be there to back up pro-life members who maintain their principled stand. If they don’t, we will make sure the voters know before Election Day.”

Survey results and analysis are available online at www.sba-list.org/poll.

According to photos released by an anonymous twitter user, Jay-Z, along with his entourage and his wife Beyonce, visited the White House Wednesday before a concert in Washington, D.C. During the visit, Jay-Z and company were apparently allowed access to the Situation Room. Photos from the visit feature Jay-Z sitting at the head of the table in the Situation Room under the president’s seal.

To read the full article click here.

Rather than a post-partisan olive branch to congressional Republicans and the American public, President Obama’s latest health-care speech was a declaration of war. He’s more than willing to use a 51-vote reconciliation majority to jam through a roughly $2 trillion health-care plan that amounts to a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of the economy. He’s prepared to stick Uncle Sam right in the middle of the age-old relationship between patients and doctors, and doctors and hospitals, all while subjugating the private health-care insurance system to the status of a government-run utility — without bending the cost curve downward.

More spending. More tax hikes on investors, businesses, and individuals. New government boards to control prices, ration care, and redistribute income. The Obama administration is basically taking a giant government leap backwards that the country doesn’t want to take.

To read the full article click here.

WASHINGTON — So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.

After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health care reform.

To read the full article click here.

My colleague Tony Perkins has just been banned from addressing the Andrews Air Force Base prayer luncheon. His invitation has been withdrawn. Tony is president of the Family Research Council. He’s a Christian minister. And he’s an honorably discharged veteran of the Marine Corps. None of this mattered. Tony had spoken out in favor of retaining the law against homosexuals serving openly in the military. That was enough to get him banned.

Let’s see where this is leading us. Tony spoke in favor of current U.S. law. It’s a law that was passed overwhelmingly by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic president (Bill Clinton). That law has been upheld in court. Tony’s position could hardly have been more mainstream. And he had no plans to discuss that law at his prayer luncheon talk. None of this mattered. He was banned all the same.

To read the full article click here.

GOP Proposition 2 — Controlling Government Growth – PASS (91.9% – 8.1%)
Every government body in Texas should be required to limit any annual increase in its budget and spending to the combined increase of population and inflation unless it first gets voter approval to exceed the allowed annual growth or in the case of an official emergency.

GOP Proposition 3 — Cutting Federal Income Taxes – PASS (93.1% – 6.9%)
In addition to aggressively eliminating irresponsible federal spending, Congress should empower American citizens to stimulate the economy by Congress cutting federal income taxes for all federal taxpayers, rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars on so-called “federal economic stimulus.”

GOP Proposition 4 — Public Acknowledgement of God – PASS (95.1% – 4.9%)
The use of the word “God”, prayers, and the Ten Commandments should be allowed at public gatherings and public educational institutions, as well as be permitted on government buildings and property.

GOP Proposition 5 — Sonogram – PASS (68.8% – 31.2%)
The Texas Legislature should enact legislation requiring a sonogram to be performed and shown to each mother about to undergo a medically unnecessary, elective abortion.

To read more election results click here.

“From Driftwood, Texas, to Washington, D.C. we are sending you a message tonight: Stop messing with Texas!” Perry said.

To read the full article click here.

“I believe that the Faith and Freedom Coalition is going to be one of the most important forces for sound public policy in America in the coming years,” said Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.* “I’m excited that the Faith and Freedom Coalition has come to Tennessee. It will help concerned Tennesseans to give voice to their convictions in the public policy arena.”

“In its short existence, The Faith and Freedom Coalition has already been effective in identifying and turning out conservative voters and we’re pleased to bring it to Tennessee,” said Chip Saltsman, former Chairman of the Republican Party of Tennessee. “With the help of our grassroots team here, Faith and Freedom will be a force in Tennessee conservative politics for a long time to come.”

* Title and affiliation are used as identification purposes only.

“If it goes down” Carville said, “it’s gonna be a simple statement: the Democrats can’t govern. They came in with a majority promising health care and they came away with nothing.”

To read the full article click here.

“Right now, Washington is not working for Arkansas families. But it ought to,” Halter says in the video as he steps out of his pickup truck. “If you want your government dedicated to helping middle class families rather than protecting special interests, then join my campaign.”

In his announcement, Halter describes his work in Bill Clinton’s presidential administration helping balance the federal budget, and helping establish the “scholarship lottery program” as second in command in Arkansas. He says “it’s past time to put more Arkansas values in Washington.”

To read the full article click here.

In remarks that could not have been more laudatory, Obama repeatedly characterized the veteran Democratic leader as a man “made of very strong stuff” who was making the right decisions for the state back in the nation’s capital.

But as Reid faces an uphill path to win re-election to a fifth Senate term, Obama’s enthusiastic endorsement does not appear to have improved the Senate majority leader’s standing among constituents, according to a new poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

To read the full article click here.

To see polling data click here.

Zakaria on his “Fareed Zakaria GPS” this morning also noted that Soros was one of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters. Zakaria asked, “Are you satisfied with the job Barack Obama has done?”

Soros said he wasn’t. Soros wanted the banks nationalized, but added that Obama “made the political decision that that is un-American, will not be accepted.”

To read more click here.

As the president’s approval rating remains in the high forties, the poll finds that voters by a wide 62 to 17 percent margin think Obama is better at campaigning than at governing.

To read the full article click here.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Republican Primary voters finds Rubio leading Crist by 18 points, 54% to 36%. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and seven percent are undecided.

To read the full article click here.

In truth, the summit is a sideshow. As the Democrats have already made it abundantly clear, this is a head fake. Their real plan is to have the House pass the Senate bill without changes, then do a “tweak” with a second bill using the budget reconciliation process in a clear and blatant violation of U.S. Senate rules.

Will it work? Too early to tell. Bart Stupak said yesterday on Fox News that there were up to 15 to 20 Democratic House members who are gravely concerned about the lack of restrictions on the taxpayer funding of abortion in the Senate bill. With the first House bill passing by the razor-thin margin of 220-215, Nancy Pelosi has no margin for error. With several seats vacant due to death or resignation, she needs 217 votes, and Joseph Cao, the Republican elected to the New Orleans House seat formerly held by William Jefferson, has already said he will vote “no” this time. Counting the resignation of Robert Wexler of Florida and the death of Jack Murtha, that brings Pelosi’s total down to 217, assuming she holds everyone else. Given Stupak’s comments, that is highly unlikely. But it may well be that some Blue Dogs will feel more comfortable voting for a bill without the public option, in spite of the weaker abortion language. Bottom line: the battle is joined, and it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.

Obamacare is supported by only about 41% of the American people and opposed by an average of about 56% according to the most recent published polls. But the Democrats are in the barrel and are bound and determined to go over the fall. They will pass this bill or die trying. Those of us opposed to government-run health care better strap on our helmets and oppose this massive, socialistic health care scheme with everything we have. Otherwise, we may spend the next decade paying for it and working to repeal it. Better to defeat it now…for good.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% fear the federal government most when it comes to such decisions. Thirty-nine percent (39%) fear private insurance companies more.

These views are unchanged from early August when many congressmen went home to town hall meetings filled with voters angry about the proposed health care plan.

To read the full article click here.

The month before Scott Brown convinced President Barack Obama’s rosy-eyed team of political climate change, Micah Sifry posted a rant on techPresident.com rejecting the notion that the Internet had empowered ordinary citizens during the president’s 2008 campaign.

“The big story of 2009,” wrote Sifry, a former editor of The Nation magazine, is that “the people who voted for [Obama] weren’t organized in any kind of new or powerful way.” Looking back to the 2008 campaign, Sifry doesn’t see increased public participation and openness. He sees tighter control.

To read the full article click here.

Bayh’s announcement was a punch in the gut to his party and his president. He rejected last-minute entreaties from President Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to stay. It was a bitter pill to swallow and it didn’t take long for the off-the-record Democrat sniping at Bayh to begin. “’He’s finished,” one Democratic political consultant told Politico “’His party needed him to stay and fight, and he ran away. People won’t forget.”

Bayh and MSM commentators bemoaned the “dysfunction” of the Senate as an institution and Washington, DC (“this town,” as the DC crowd calls it). This almost requires the dubbing in of a laugh track. Where was the hand-wringing when Democrats were filibustering George W. Bush’s appellate court nominees? Or when they did everything in their power to prematurely end U.S. involvement in Iraq with statements like “the war is lost”? Or when there was discussion of impeaching Bush or trying Cheney for war crimes? Or when Democrats called for an independent counsel to investigate the Valerie Plame leak, leading to the conviction of Lewis “Scooter” Libby and the harassment of other Bush aides when Patrick Fitzgerald knew from the outset that the source for the leak was Richard Armitage? The selective bemoaning of Washington’s “dysfunction” and “partisanship” by liberals who over-reached in pursuing an extremist agenda and have run into the opposition of the American people is quite amusing.

More seriously, Bayh’s retirement is the latest loss of an endangered species of centrist Democrats. There used to be powerful and influential centrist Democrats in the Senate like Sam Nunn (and later Zell Miller) of Georgia, David Boren of Oklahoma, and Russell Long of Louisiana. They voted for the Reagan or Bush tax cuts and supported a strong defense. But they are a dying breed. In this sense, Bayh is the last of the Mohicans. It says a lot about the current state of the Democratic party; even as they celebrated their largest majorities in Congress in decades, the center was imploding. The hijacking of the party of Jackson and Jefferson by the far left since the 2004 elections is now coming back to haunt Democrats. As Democratic pollster and former Bill Clinton advisor Doug Schoen put it: “This [Bayh’s retirement) sends a message that centrists are increasingly rare species in a Democratic Party that has lurched too far to the left.” But don’t hold your breath waiting for “Democrat centrists leave party in droves” stories from the MSM. They only write those stories about Republicans.

Here is what happened. Ohio teen Elisabeth Trisler was to be recognized on the floor of the Ohio Statehouse for winning the National Right to Life Oratory Contest. Her state representative organized the presentation, which is fairly common during legislative sessions. However, when pro-abortion House Speaker Armond Budish became aware of the presentation he ordered it canceled.

Two days after, Ohio Right to Life brought attention to the issue, Budish reversed his decision.

http://blog.dispatch.com/dailybriefing/2010/02/budish_changes_stance_on_right.shtml

“Speaker Budish recently called me to convey his change of heart and I thanked him on behalf of the pro-life community,” said Gonidakis. “Blocking speech because you don’t like what someone is saying or what they stand for goes against the very fabric of who we are as Americans. And, while the speaker got there the hard way, at least he got there.”

“Many thanks are deserved to the broader pro-life movement, including the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, for mobilizing on behalf of this issue,” added Gonidakis. “When the pro-life community speaks with one loud voice, elected leaders quickly address our concerns.”

http://www.ohiolife.org/base.cfm?page_id=1725

Move over Sarah Palin – the GOP has a new star on the rise! Former speaker of the Florida house, Marco Rubio, has pulled twelve points ahead of Florida Governor Charlie Crist in the GOP senatorial race.

Although the election is not until August, some political observers are speculating Crist will pull out of the race in time to get back in it as a Democrat or an Independent. Crist’s support has fallen from 53 percent in August to 37 percent as of February 1.

Only 38 years old, Rubio, the son of a bartender and maid, is the father of four young children. When I met him for dinner a few weeks ago in DC, Rubio left the table to call home and tell his children ‘goodnight’ just before bedtime. Rubio, from the Cuban community of Miami, obviously didn’t do this for show — he often spoke in a self-effacing way about his wife, Jeanette, who reminds him to take out the garbage and “move those boxes.”

To read the full article click here.

My sense is that Palin has not made a decision about running for president, but as she told Chris Wallace on Fox she has not foreclosed that option. In the meantime, she is raising funds for GOP candidates (many of them in primaries), giving speeches, maintaining ongoing exposure as a Fox News contributor, and making contributions through her political action committee. All these activities will redound to the benefit of conservatives in the short term, regardless of her long-term plans.

Palin has sharpened both her message and performance on the stump. Her Tea Party remarks provide a blueprint of sorts for conservative candidates in 2010. First, she led with Obama’s lack of leadership in the war on terrorism, including Mirandizing the Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after fifty minutes and treating terrorism as primarily a law enforcement matter. “To win that war we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at a lectern,” she said to a loud ovation. This is reminiscent of Scott Brown’s line during his victory speech after winning the U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts: we want our taxes spent buying weapons to fight terrorists, not paying for lawyers to defend them. Obama claims that he is handling high-value detainees identically as his predecessor. If that is the case, why does he continue to claim that the Bush administration undermined the war on terror by violating our own values? He can’t have it both ways, and this is a huge liability for Obama and the Democrats.

Second, during the Q and A following her speech, when asked what the first things Republicans should do if they regain Congress, Palin emphasized fiscal responsibility and time-honored values. “We’ve got to reign in the spending, obviously, and not raise it [with] extremely high budgets and then say, OK, we are going to freeze a couple of programs,” she said. Then, talking about America’s religious heritage, she said America needs to “go back to some of our roots as a God-fearing nation” and elect leaders unafraid “to proclaim their reliance on our Creator.”

Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, appearing on MSNBC, denounced all this as essentially hate speech. He attacked Palin for being “a merchant of hate with an oh-gosh smile.” (Translation: it’s working!)

This may be Palin’s unique strength. She understands the fiscal and values agendas of conservatism are reinforcing, not mutually exclusive. A nation that relies on God and family for its strength does not seek to expand the federal government to meet every need. Fiscal responsibility and small government are not merely economic principles, they speak to the moral character of a people that believes government has an important but limited function. In this sense, Palin is a fusionist who weaves the various strands of conservatism into a coherent whole.

This is why Palin can act as a bridge between Tea Party activists and the Republican Party and have credibility with both. For now the media is fascinated with whether she will run in 2012. They hope she does, if only because it will make for the most interesting political story since the Obama-Hillary rumble in the 2008 Democratic primaries. That decision is probably a year away. Meanwhile, the MSM is missing the bigger story, at least in the short-term: Palin, who they tried to drive out of respectable political discourse, is re-energizing the grassroots of a Republican Party that they dismissed as dead. Their attacks against her—and the values she symbolizes—not only backfired, they are now working in her and the GOP’s favor.

What ultimately drives the media crazy is they know instinctively they are co-conspirators in her rise. From the Katie Couric interview to the over-the-top attacks by the likes of Shrum, by overplaying their hand they made Palin a bigger force than they ever intended. Had they simply been fair to Palin when she ran for vice president and treated her with decency, she would not be viewed now by so many grassroots conservatives as a victim of irrational elitist hatred. As much as John McCain in selecting her as his running mate in 2008, the MSM made her a force, and she is proving she can use that platform very effectively indeed.

President Obama attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington yesterday. His own denomination—the United Church of Christ—has been teasingly described as “Unitarians considering Christ.” I don’t know how much he is considering Jesus, but he sure is quiet about it if he is. Even among Christians, the president seems to believe in a Christless Christianity.

He quoted President Kennedy’s inaugural—always a good idea. “Civility is not a sign of weakness,” he said. But as with omitting Jesus, the president skipped the rest of the JFK quote: “. . . but sincerity is always subject to proof.”

To read the full article click here.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the rest of all the right-thinking (which is to say left-doing) world, is in high dudgeon. They are inflamed over the U.S. Supreme Court’s striking down major portions of the McCain-Feingold Act in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case.

President Obama took the unprecedented step of confronting the Supreme Court about this ruling during his State of the Union address last week. The president’s characterization of the court’s ruling was way off base.

Justice Alito famously mouthed the words: “Simply not true.” Justice Alito was right. He was right on two grounds: First, Mr. Obama had wrongly stated that the court would now allow corporations to contribute to federal campaigns. They can’t. Second, Mr. Obama was wrong to tongue-lash the members of the Supreme Court while they sat before him, robed and silent.

The Post’s columnist E.J. Dionne thinks conservatives who criticize Mr. Obama’s incivility are being hypocrites. Mr. Dionne points to Ronald Reagan’s criticism of Roe v. Wade in a 1983 article in the Human Life Review. “I know of no one on the right who protested when President Ronald Reagan … took on the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of ten years earlier.”

To read the full article click here.

Obama said 90 percent of the bills passed by the House and the Senate are fine, with just 10 percent presenting problems that need to be fixed. “We were just about to clean those up,” Obama said, “and then the Massachusetts election happened and everybody said, ‘Oh, oh, oh, it’s over. Well no, it’s not over.”

To read the full article click here.

Her GOP rivals, including Congressman John Boozman who is expected to enter the race on Saturday, all earn roughly 50% of the vote against the two-term Democrat.

But worse for Lincoln in the latest survey is that her numbers continue to fall. In September and December, her support was between 39% and 41% in these match-ups. Last month, it slipped to 38% or 39% support against any of four Republicans. Now, her support ranges from 33% to 36%.

To read the full article click here.

For the first time since June 2003, the Republican candidate has a five point lead on the generic ballot in a new survey conducted for NPR by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner and Associates. The Republican candidate has a 44%-39% advantage.

(The analysis of the data in this article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of NPR or GQR.)

In 2008, the Dems won the generic ballot by eight points. To have a thirteen point shift in just over one year is a remarkable shift in the political environment. The GOP lead is bolstered by a twelve point advantage among Independents. The caveat for Republicans, however, is that 40% of Independents are undecided. Thus, they are still up for grabs.

To read the full article click here.

Fox News is Americans’ most trusted source of news: That’s what Public Policy Polling reported earlier this week. ABC’s director of polling disputed the poll’s findings largely because of its use of “robopolling.” But now a second poll using a different methodology—and human callers—has reached a similar conclusion.

In a poll commissioned by National Review Institute, McLaughlin & Associates found that Fox News was the top response from likely voters who were asked what source of news about politics and government they most trusted. Thirty-six percent of respondents picked Fox News, compared to 20 percent who picked CNN and 6 percent who picked MSNBC. NBC and ABC each got 6 percent, too, and CBS 5.

To read entire article and to see full results of the National poll click here.

To read the full article click here.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely GOP Primary voters in the state finds Rubio leading Crist 49% to 37%. Three percent (3%) prefer another candidate, and 11% are undecided. To read the full article click here.

This is the newest poll since Quinnipiac Univeristy’s survey stated that with Florida’s primary seven months away, Rubio was favored by 47 percent compared with 44 percent who preferred Crist — statistically a tie in a poll that has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. To read full report click here.

Johnsen worked for years to strip the Catholic Church of its tax-exempt status. Why? Because the Catholic Church has never wavered in its outspoken defense of unborn children.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) – Dawn Johnsen is President Obama’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It’s arguably the most important office at the Department of Justice. OLC sets policy for the entire federal government.

When not serving in government, Dawn Johnsen has spent her career promoting abortion-on-demand. She denies there is even such a thing as Partial-Birth Abortion. Even the term, she maintains, is “intentionally provocative.” She does not think that “progressives” —that’s PC-speak for liberal— should suggest that abortion is ever a tragedy.

To read the full article click here.

After stinging defeats in the 2006 midterms and the 2008 presidential election, we Republicans were supposedly condemned to a lengthy penance in the political wilderness, searching for our souls and groping for big ideas to rival the new Democratic juggernaut.

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

Resounding GOP victories in New Jersey, Virginia and, most dramatically, Massachusetts have invigorated the party and revealed the perils of Democratic hubris. These were states where Democrats controlled all the levers of power: the governors’ offices, the Senate seats, a majority of House seats and five of six state legislative chambers.

Apparently, the Democrats thought people had voted for them because of their agenda — an agenda they really hadn’t bothered to share with the electorate in the first place. And now, the party’s bungling has resulted in the highest disapproval rating in Gallup polling history for a president after his first year.

To read the full article click here.

Obama’s “centralizing control” of Democrat party political operations is re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The opening salvo came from David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, dispatched by Obama to the Democratic National Committee like Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction, swabbing up evidence of the carnage and disposing of bodies. Plouffe’s first piece of unsolicited advice to Democrats in a Washington Post op ed is, incredibly, to stop the “bed wetting.” Huh? This is what the Obama White House apparently thinks of Democrats who are legitimately worried about the fate of the party in nine months? So to those Democrats panic-stricken by the party’s perilous fortunes, the new mantra is, “Stop your whining.” One can only imagine how that is going over in U.S. Senate and House cloakrooms as more incumbents head for the exits and more candidates (the most recent being Beau Biden, son of Joe Biden) either decline to run, equivocate on their decision, or quit the race. In fairness to Plouffe, he offers some other helpful suggestions, such as “pass meaningful health care reform now” (Harry Reid must be thinking: why didn’t I think of that!) and “create jobs” (hard to do when the cornerstone of your economic policy is skyrocketing taxes and more spending).

For a political team that was once viewed as one of the best in modern times, this is pablum. It is not responsive to the clear verdict of the voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, who rejected Obama’s extreme agenda, not just domestically, but his weakness and vacillation in prosecuting the war on terrorism as well. These elections took place in a purple state, a blue state, and a deep-blue state. The outcome cannot be dismissed with a Tony Robbins fist pump and a vow to “fight harder.”

Contrast this with the column by Republican pollsters Glen Bolger and Bill McInturff, who were the pollsters for Bob McDonnell and Scott Brown. They offer valuable insights drawn from focus groups, public opinion research, and other data from the Virginia and Massachusetts races and provide a playbook for how a party that was viewed as headed for years in the wilderness can make a strong comeback this year.

Newt Gingrich used to talk about leadership in terms of “listen,” “learn,” “lead.” The Obama leadership philosophy seems to be: “plug ears,” “ignore,” “denigrate those not on board,” “lead.” We await Obama’s State of the Union address, but hardly with bated breath.

Now that the bluest of blue states has elected Scott Brown as senator, commentators are widely predicting that President Obama will “pivot” towards the right.

But Obama’s comments since that win show that he has no intention of revamping his core positions. Instead, he has clearly decided that the key to winning back the electorate is to try to snow Americans with misleading claims.

First, Obama told George Stephanopoulos that one of his “mistakes” was that he did not explain his healthcare proposal clearly enough.

“I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” Obama said. “I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here, the people will get it.”

In other words, Americans are so dumb they never understood what the healthcare bill was really about. Even though Obama gave 411 speeches and 158 interviews in his first year in office — usually pushing healthcare — people still didn’t get how beneficial the proposal really was.

To read the full article click here.

Ralph also visited Colorado, where he met with activists, donors, and local leaders active in the Colorado Faith and Freedom Coalition. Ralph spoke at a dinner of prominent local political and business leaders in Denver. Colorado is considered a significant battleground state in 2010, and its politics have been roiled by the recent announcement by Democratic Governor Scott Ritter that he will not seek re-election. Ritter had been trailing former Congressman Scott McInnis in the polls. Ralph also attended the Rough Rider breakfast the following morning, which was keynoted by business leader Foster Friess, a good friend and supporter of FFC.

“We are excited about what Faith and Freedom Coalition has already accomplished in 2009. Our goal is to build a grassroots organization that will be a permanent fixture on the Colorado political landscape,” said John Ramstead, chairman of the Faith and Freedom of Colorado. “The enthusiasm and excitement that has greeted our launching FFC here in Colorado has been overwhelming.”

Whenever the Establishment in Washington gets a Big Idea about the need to get beyond partisanship, reach for your wallet. The latest Big Idea is President Obama’s proposal for an Executive Commission on Debt Reduction. The idea is modeled on the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC). That commission had as its task closing military bases we thought we did not need in the post-Cold War era. The reason we needed BRAC, we were told, is that too many local congressmen were protecting the bases in their own districts, and none of the excess bases could be closed. It was blowing out the Pentagon budget, they said.

President Obama wants a commission to help him stop excess spending. Even if we do not pass his health care proposals, the rising costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are projected to grow so vast that they will reach 300% of the Gross Domestic Product by the year 2050. This would require tax hikes of $12,072 per family in the U.S.

Clearly, we can’t continue on this glide path.

To read the full article click here.

Massachusetts—in a huge turnout of over 2 million voters in a special election—has sent a clear and undeniable message to Washington: defeat the Obama-backed health care reform bill, stop the spending spree, and put the brakes on the Obama agenda, from terrorism to spending to taxes. The defeat of Martha Coakley and the election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate is the canary in the coal mine for Democrats. This is a state that, while it has elected Republicans as governor in recent years (William Weld, Mitt Romney), had not elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 37 years. The seat won by Brown had been held by Edward M. Kennedy for 47 years, and is currently occupied by Paul Kirk, a placeholder and longtime Kennedy family retainer. Brown will be the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation, representing a state with only 13 percent of the voters registered Republicans.

According to Gallup, Obama’s poll numbers have plummeted faster than any president in modern times. His job approval in a recent CBS News poll stood at an anemic 46 percent, while his rating for health care was a mere 36 percent. (And this from CBS News.) Independents have abandoned the Democrats, breaking for Republican candidates by 2-1 or 3-1, and a resurgent grassroots conservative movement is tapping a deep vein of voter discontent. Then came Massachusetts.

First, Bob McDonnell won the Virginia gubernatorial contest by an 18-point landslide. On the same night, Chris Christie defeated Jon Corzine and became the first non-incumbent Republican governor candidate to win 50 percent of the vote in New Jersey since the 1970’s. Democrat pollster Celinda Lake said it best: “There’s a lot of blame to go around, but the point of the matter is there’s a wave. And that wave: it hit Virginia; it hit New Jersey; it hit Massachusetts.” she said.

Before last night, Democrats were in denial. The Virginia blow-out? The White House threw Creigh Deeds under the bus, saying he was a poor candidate who refused to embrace Obama. New Jersey? Corzine had his own problems. When Obama’s poll numbers began to crater, the White House’s response was to shoot the messenger. They smeared respected independent pollster Scott Rasmussen when he showed Obama’s job approval ratings dropping. Rasmussen is now fully vindicated, accurately documenting the Brown surge in Massachusetts.

The White House also thought Chicago-style machine intimidation would work with the alternative media. When Fox News broadcast commentary critical of Obama, Obama advisor Anita Dunn went into attack mode and claimed it was “not a news organization.” The result? Fox News now has ratings three times those of MSNBC and CNN combined in prime time.

When millions of average Americans poured into the streets to protest Obama’s out-of-control spending at “tea parties” beginning last April, the White House and its liberal allies denounced these protesters as “astroturf,” “tea-baggers,” “evil,” and even compared them to Nazis. House Majority Leader and FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey organized opposition to Obama’s policies, so White House allies pressured his DC law/lobbying firm to dump him. I saw Dick at a rally opposing Democratic health care reform the weekend it happened, and he joked: “They made a big mistake. Now I can spend all my time fighting them.”

With each defeat and setback, the Obama political team and the Democrats engaged in spin, finger-pointing, leaks to an adoring press corps, all the while ignoring the warning signs. As late as yesterday, while the Democratic establishment hung black crepe and mourned the impending loss of “the Kennedy seat,” a Democratic official was telling Politico with a straight face that Organizing for America—Obama’s campaign political operation now housed at the DNC—“is a winner” in Massachusetts, “that’s clear, win or lose.” Win or lose? Only in the Alice-in-Wonderland universe in which the Obama political team lives is someone who suffers an historic defeat proclaimed a winner. So I suppose Obama should have gotten a gold medal for flying all the way to Copenhagen on bended knee before the IOC, even if Chicago did lose the Olympics.

Is the Obama team still in denial? One wonders. Does Obama have the capacity to listen to the voters, call an audible, and adjust his policies and trim his ambitions? I doubt it. Obama has always struck me as a committed liberal, a true believer, and he will try to salvage health care and get whatever extreme policies he can passed before the 2010 elections. If other Democrats watch their careers go up in smoke and suffer the loss of their offices as a result, so be it. We shall see.

In the book on the 2008 presidential campaign Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann recount that Obama campaign aides referred to him privately as “the black Jesus.”Whenever they were in trouble, Obama’s eloquence and gifts saved the day. But after last night, Obama is not looking like a political savior anymore. In fact, he looks like the kiss of death. Massachusetts was opening volley of the 2010 elections, and Democrats are bracing for more defeats of historic proportions.

Dawn Johnsen is President Obama’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It’s arguably the most important office at DoJ. OLC sets policy for the entire federal government.

When not serving in government, Dawn Johnsen spent her career promoting abortion-on-demand. She denies there is even such a thing as partial-birth abortion. Even the term, she maintains, is “intentionally provocative.” She does not think that “progressives”—that’s PC-speak for liberal—should suggest that abortion is ever a tragedy.

Dawn Johnsen even rejects Bill Clinton’s slippery formulation: “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” Dismiss for the moment that Bill and Hillary Clinton did everything they could in their eight years to promote abortion world-wide. The only places they made abortion rare were on the Moon and in Antarctica.

Even the Clintons’ basic premise was flawed. If abortion is “a fundamental constitutional right,” as they said in every official document, then why should it be rare? Is there any other fundamental constitutional right we want to be rare?

Hillary once said abortion is “wrong.” (Newsweek, Oct. 31, 1994). Only once. But she pressed governments around the world to legalize it. That’s an odd way to deal with something you think is wrong.

Dawn Johnsen doesn’t think abortion is wrong at all. She is all for it. She drafted the five lethal Executive Orders, which Bill Clinton signed within hours of taking the oath as president, to promote easier access to abortion. Clinton struck down Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Doctrine, allowing U.S. funds to go to Planned Parenthood and the UN Fund for Population. This order sluiced money to abortionists worldwide and even, as in China, to those who force women to have abortions.

Bill Clinton struck down Reagan’s order to Planned Parenthood to separate their so-called family planning activities from their abortion facilities. Under Bill Clinton—and up until the current day—teens can take devices and pills out one door and, when these fail, they are hustled back into the revolving door to the abortion center.

Johnsen goes much further in her pro-abortion militancy than even the Clintons; than even President Obama. She worked for years to strip the Catholic Church of its tax-exempt status. Why? Because the Catholic Church has never wavered in its outspoken defense of unborn children. Dawn Johnsen was part of the Abortion Rights Mobilization (ARM ) that fought a legal battle for eight years in the courts.

ARM’s assault on religious liberty and free speech was the brainchild of Lawrence Lader, the co-founder of NARAL, for whom Johnsen also worked. Lader said “abortion is central to everything in life and how we want to live it.” Johnsen’s record puts her very much in that camp. She has even likened pregnancy to slavery.

The Catholic Church would not be the only target if Johnsen is confirmed. Many Protestant churches and associations take pro-life stances. These include the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). All of these church bodies could find themselves in the cross-hairs if Dawn Johnsen is confirmed.

We are very close to seeing a nationalized health care bill pass through Congress and sent to President Obama for signature. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has signaled us that the final bill that is being “ping-ponged” back and forth between Speaker Pelosi’s office and Sen. Harry Reid’s likely will include federal funding for abortion on demand. That’s bad enough. But we can see that if churches object to funding for killing the unborn, they could be targeted by Dawn Johnsen at the Office of Legal Counsel.

Chief Justice John Marshall famously said in McCullough v. Maryland that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” That’s what Dawn Johnsen tried to do for eight years to the Catholic Church in America. That’s what she could do to your church if she is confirmed by the Senate.

Fear of losing their tax-exempt status has for too long kept Christian pastors from speaking out on the grave moral issues of the day. It shouldn’t be, but it is so.

Because of Dawn Johnsen’s pro-abortion extremism, because she has sought to impose a “chilling effect” on religious free speech, because she has tried to destroy churches, this ACLU lawyer should be rejected by the U.S. Senate.
Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. He serves on the board of directors of the Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union and National Rifle Association.

To read the article on DailyCaller.com click here.

But in a major embarrassment for the United States, as we undertake a surge of our forces to defeat the Taliban, Japan is pulling naval forces out of Afghanistan. ABC News reports that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama opposed the mission, and rebuffed U.S. entreaties that his nation stay in the Afghan war effort.

Remember George W. Bush? In the media’s telling, he supposedly pursued an arrogant, cowboy, unilateral diplomacy. Yet Bush persuaded the Japanese to deploy military forces beyond its own borders for the first time since the end of World War II. This was highly controversial within Japan, given the post-World War II pacifist constitution that stipulated that Japan could only use its military only for self-defense. Bush’s personal diplomacy resulted in then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi deploying Japanese ground troops in Iraq and naval vessels in the Indian Ocean to assist with the war in Afghanistan.

Now the Japanese deployment is ending at a moment of great import in Afghanistan. Despite a global apology tour, a Nobel Peace prize (which even he admitted he did not deserve), and repeated attempts to “engage” Iran and other sworn enemies of the United States, Obama has now failed to persuade the Japanese—one of our best allies in the world—to remain committed with military forces to the war in Afghanistan.
The conceit of Obama’s presidential candidacy and now his presidency, which was that through his charismatic personality and the healing balm of his eloquence he would persuade the world to cooperate with the U.S. The opposite is now unfolding. Weakness, vacillation, and a lack of moral clarity in the prosecution of the war on terrorism that is causing us to lose the commitment of current and potential allies.

Ohio has lost 300,000 jobs over the past few years, and that has sent Ted Strickland’s job approval rating plummeting. Kasich is running a solid, grassroots campaign. Both he and Portman, who represented Ohio and served together in Congress, are making jobs and the economy the centerpiece of their campaigns. According to Ken Blackwell, chairman of the Ohio Faith and Freedom Coalition, “These Ohio poll numbers and Scott Brown’s surge in Massachusetts illustrate that voters are growing increasingly wary of the free-spending and dangerous big government Democrat agenda. Like Massachusetts voters, Ohioans don’t see any signs of progress and seem to have very little confidence in the party in power. And if you look at Ohio, where unemployment doubled, from 5.4 percent to 10.6 percent, since Democrat Ted Strickland became governor, voters have every right to feel frustrated.”

According to the survey conducted Sunday evening, Brown leads the Democratic attorney general 52 percent to 43 percent.

“I actually think the bottom is falling out,” said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery, referring to Coakley’s fall in the polls over the last ten days. “I think that this candidate is in freefall. Clearly this race is imploding for her.”

To read the full article click here.

In 1804, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Abigail Adams on the free exercise of individual conscience in America, and its indispensability to our freedoms. We may disagree, wrote the Founder, but that disagreement is to be welcomed, not crushed: “I tolerate with utmost latitude the right of others to differ with me in opinion without imputing to them criminality. I know too well all the weaknesses and uncertainty of human reason to wonder at its different results.”

Martha Coakley thinks she knows better than Thomas Jefferson.

The Democratic contender for the late Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat made her uphill climb to election a bit steeper this past Thursday when she told radio host Ken Pittman of WBSM that persons with certain ethical principles should not work in the medical professions.Pittman specifically asked Coakley about the rights of conscience of health-care providers, and segued into a query on Roman Catholics in Massachusetts’s hospitals.

A response grounded in the American tradition of pluralism, freedom of conscience, and an ethical consideration for the autonomy of the individual would have gone something like this: “Ken, it’s not the state’s proper role to interpose itself between the conscience of the provider and that provider’s duties. In America, government derives its moral convictions and authority from the people — not the other way around.”

Martha Coakley is not grounded in the American tradition of pluralism, freedom of conscience, or an ethical consideration for the autonomy of the individual. Her response to Pittman was to denounce the idea of any allowance for individual conscience in federal healthcare legislation. Then she uttered the line that alone ought to sink her campaign: “The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.”

It’s not often that a candidate for federal office goes on the record with her belief that whole classes of Americans should be excluded from whole sectors of our economy. Martha Coakley did exactly that, and the only term to describe it is one we should use sparingly in our public discourse. It should be reserved for direct attacks on our heritage as a free country of free people. It should be reserved for assaults on the foundations of our liberties as laid down in the American Revolution.

It’s anti-American.

Martha Coakley’s declaration that Roman Catholics “probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room” doesn’t just betray an ignorance of history and society,though it does both in full. Catholic provision of healthcare is a proud tradition of centuries that, if you’re theologically minded, goes back to the healings of the Apostles — and if you’re historically minded, goes back to the lay and clerical orders that provided care to travelers, pilgrims and the poor beginning in the Dark Ages. In the United States today, Catholic healthcare facilities exist in all fifty states. Despite Coakley’s wish that they not do so, those facilities provided care in nearly 17 million emergency-room visits last year.

Beyond Coakley’s ignorance, the effect of her pronouncement is nothing short of pernicious. If public officials decide it’s appropriate to recommend exclusion of faith groups from employment, where does that end? It doesn’t take much imagination to grasp that the threat only begins with Catholics. Adherents of Christian Science might find would-be U.S. Senators questioning their fitness for any health-related profession. Believers in literal Biblical Creation could see liberal officeholders demanding their ejection from the teaching profession. Muslim faithful might be urged out of security and military professions.

The logical consequences of Martha Coakley’s statement are both grotesque and stupid.

Martha Coakley does not exist in a vacuum. Her belief that conscience and its protections must be forced out of the healthcare sector are tightly bound up with the ideology underlying the President’s push for healthcare reform. That reform threatens ever-greater government involvement in healthcare, and probably portends its takeover if passed.

With that comes the precedence of government priorities — and there’s little room for individual conscience then. That’s why President Obama last month moved to revoke the conscience protections afforded healthcare workers and providers under Federal rules. As Kevin Hasson and Luke Goodrich of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty wrote, “Regardless of one’s view on abortion, contraceptives, war or capital punishment, respecting conscience only when one agrees with you is no respect for conscience at all. Those who champion‘choice’ and ‘tolerance’ should respect the conscience-based choices of those with whom they disagree.”

President Obama is taking the first step toward forcing healthcare professionals to follow the government’s ethical agenda rather than their own. If Martha Coakley wins on Tuesday, it won’t be the last.

Hidden in Obama’s health care bill is a huge marriage penalty. Both the Senate and House bills would set up yet another federal program to provide financial incentives to subsidize marriage avoidance and illegitimate offspring.

Even though all evidence shows that marriage is the best remedy for poverty, lack of health care, domestic violence, child abuse, and school dropouts, federal welfare programs continue to discriminate against marriage and instead give taxpayer handouts to those who reject marriage. This isn’t any accident; it is a central part of the Democrats’ political strategy that produced 70 percent of unmarried women voting for Obama for President in 2008.

To read the full article click here.

“You’re asking us to find a needle in a haystack,” complained one Homeland Security type on TV. It is hard to know which one of 500,000 names on a “watch list” will be the one who makes a move to kill thousands of Americans.

The problem is not just what Dutch airport security failed to do in Amsterdam—that was bad enough. Obviously, we have not put the Netherlands on our list of suspect al-Qaida-threatened countries. Nor have we put Britain on that list. Isn’t that where Richard Reid, the failed shoe bomber, hailed from?

What I’m most concerned about is what the Obama administration did after Abdulmutallab was collared in Detroit. Immediately, this non-U.S. citizen, this jihadist was given Miranda rights and treated as a common criminal. Back to the future, back to Sept. 10, 2001.

The administration’s counter-terrorism point man, John Brennan, was sent out to do the rounds of Sunday morning talk shows. This was the week after Homeland Security’s Janet Napolitano tripped all over herself in saying “the system worked.” She had to spend last week trying to “walk back” those comments. Don’t try this through an airport security gate in Newark.

John Brennan is the administration’s designated hitter. He is the one who is supposed to reassure us all. Except Brennan doesn’t reassure anyone. Claiming to be non-political, not a Democrat or a Republican, he dumped all over the Bush administration’s record of rendition of Gitmo detainees to Saudi Arabia. From there, we now know, a number of them were released to go to Yemen. There, they have become leaders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Okay, this one Bush policy was wrong. We know that now. So is Brennan reassuring us that the Obama administration has learned its lesson and will not release any more Gitmo detainees? Not at all. “Bush did it, too” is all they can say. They are repeating the worst mistake of the Bush administration—without retaining the basic thrust of an administration that kept Americans safe for seven years.

Then there’s this: Brennan says that Abdulmutallab can be induced to talk by plea bargaining. So, if he’s charged with 288 counts of attempted murder, air piracy, arson, etc., we can offer him a reduced sentence?

Why should he only be charged with 288 counts of attempted murder? Isn’t it clear that he waited until his jet was descending over Detroit’s airport crowded with Christmas travelers? If he wanted to kill only those 288 passengers on Flight 253, he might have ignited his underpants over the Atlantic.

We still don’t know if terrorists brought down TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996, killing all 230 people aboard. That’s because it’s so difficult to investigate crashes over open ocean. So, even if it was caused by terrorists, they did not achieve their goal—which is to maximize the number of deaths and to do it in a way that leaves no doubt that they are responsible.

The key here is that the Obama administration is dangerously naive about terrorism. Can John Brennan really be talking about extracting information from the underpants bomber by offering him a reduced sentence? From what to what? Should we charge him with the attempted murder of 3,000 Americans—including all those on the ground that Christmas Day—and let him plea bargain down to only the 288 on board his own jet?

What, exactly, does Brennan’s kid glove mean in terms of terms? Will Abdulmutallab be allowed to plea bargain down to, say, the 150 years that Bernie Madoff has been sentenced to serve in federal prison? What possible difference would this make in his willingness to talk? What deterrence does this policy provide to men who are perfectly willing to commit suicide? No security for us, no deterrence for them. Obama, Holder, Napolitano and Brennan have this much in common: They’re not serious.

You can tell they’re not serious when even liberals like California Congresswoman Jane Harman (D) is arguing for no more releases from Gitmo. “I think it is a bad time to send the 90 or so Yemenis back to Yemen,” said Chairman Harman in a story reported in The Hill. When would be a good time? Still, Harman continues to support closing Gitmo, which raises the question: Where do you put the prisoners? If you put them in U.S. prisons, they get “lawyered up” and the full range of rights of U.S. defendants. And they can potentially infect our own prison population.

Can any Member of Congress face the voters this November pledging to have a kinder and gentler policy toward those who have vowed to murder Americans? By extending the rights of Americans to those who are trying to destroy America, the Obama administration is turning the Constitution into a suicide pact. They can’t find the needle. They can’t even find the haystack.

To read the article at the dailycaller.com click here.

Intensifying the gloom, the Democrat says, is the fact that the same polls showing Coakley falling behind also show President Obama with a healthy approval rating in the state. “With Obama at 60 percent in Massachusetts, this shouldn’t be happening, but it is,” the Democrat says.

To read the full article click here.

Americans are a generous people. Haiti is in need of our prayers and our help. This is the time for us to stand together as a country, as individuals, and as people of faith to aid those in need.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Haiti who are suffering beyond imagining. Please visit www.billygraham.org, http://crs.org/, or http://american.redcross.org/supporthaiti to contribute to the relief effort.

That rating is Mr. Obama’s lowest yet in CBS News polling, and the poll marks the first time his approval rating has fallen below the 50 percent mark. Forty-one percent now say they disapprove of Mr. Obama’s performance as president.

To read the full article click here.

Actually, “leads” is the wrong word: PPP, a Democratic polling firm, reports that Republican Scott Brown is favored by 48% of likely Massachusetts voters and Democrat Martha Coakley by 47%–a statistical tie, given the margin of error. Still, this is big, big news. It looks like Brown could actually win the January 19 special election and provide, as he has promised to do, the 41st and decisive vote against the Democrats’ health care bill. Only last week pollster Scott Rasmussen, accused by liberal bloggers of giving Republican-leaning results, showed Coakley leading 50%-41% among likely voters. PPP confirms Rasmussen’s finding that Republicans are much more interested and motivated to vote than Democrats, as was the case in the November 2009 New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. In addition, likely voters oppose the Obama health care plan by a 47%-41% margin and give Obama a tepid 44%-43% job approval. In a state (technically, a commonwealth) which Obama carried 62%-36% in November 2008.

PPP shows Brown with very high favorables (57%-25%), while Coakley has only lukewarm favorable (50%-42%). I’m not surprised. Brown in his ads and media appearances comes across as likeable, independent and knowledgeable and as a person of convictions. Coakley has been avoiding the campaign trail and two-candidate debates (she insists on a libertarian splinter candidate participating), and she tends to avoid giving firm answers on anything. She’s scheduled to come down to Washington next week for a lobbyist-infested fundraiser—not a good move given the anti-lobbyist feeling that’s so evident this year (and which Obama played on during the 2008 campaign). Coakley reminds me of the old cold fish aunt who purses her lips and disapproves of everything every other family member does. You definitely did not want to sit next to her at Thanksgiving dinner.

To learn out how you can help in the fight to bring conservative values to Massachusetts click here.

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Virginia’s lame duck Gov. Tim Kaine appeared on “Fox News Sunday” this weekend. Kaine, who also serves as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was paired with GOP Chairman Michael Steele.

Before they could get into elephants vs. donkeys, Kaine was asked about the comments of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). In a new book, “Game Change,” Reid is quoted as saying then-Sen. Barack Obama had a good chance to become America’s first black president. Why? According to Reid, the reasons were that he is “light-skinned” and “doesn’t speak with a Negro dialect unless he wants to.”

Not surprisingly, Reid spent a good part of the weekend trying to “walk back” that clumsy quote. But he had clearly dug himself a hole. And Tim Kaine was trying to help Reid climb out of that hole. But here’s how Kaine responded to Chris Wallace on the show:

KAINE: Well, I think if you look at the remarks, as I have, it was all in the context of saying positive things about Senator Obama and why he —

WALLACE: Negro dialect?

KAINE: — might be a wonderful —

WALLACE: Light-skinned?

KAINE: Positive things about his candidacy and why his candidacy would be strong. And so I think, you know, again, while he said the choice of words was unfortunate, he stepped right up to it, acknowledged it and said, “Look, I said things that I shouldn’t have or I should have said differently.”

It definitely was in the context of recognizing in Sen. Obama a great candidate and future president. And that’s why they’re working so well. …

So, Gov. Kaine, let’s get this straight: Representing the Democratic Party, you believe that Obama’s being light-skinned and not having a Negro dialect are among the reasons why Obama’s candidacy would be strong?

The wonder here is not that Harry Reid is not instantly pummeled by the same media that yelped for then-Sen. Trent Lott’s scalp. We’re all used to the double standard applied when Democrats say things that Republicans would be boiled in oil for.

The amazing thing is that Kaine — in trying to rescue the Democrats perennially “misspoken” spokesman — climbed right down into the same hole. Why, Gov. Kaine, do you say that the Reid comments were — if taken in their full context — all about how good a candidate Obama would be? Why do you affirm and reinforce Reid’s errors?

What we’re seeing here is the “free pass” that Democrats get when they say outrageous things. Oh well, the media say, they’re the ones who passed the Great Civil Rights Bill of 1964. We never hear the fact that Republicans provided — by percentage — more votes for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats did, that the Senate filibuster of the Civil Rights Bill could not have been overcome except with near-unanimous Republican support.

We’re forever told of Richard Nixon’s mean and nasty Southern Strategy. Why is it we never hear that the Democrats had a Southern Strategy from 1791 until 1964?

Harry Reid’s comments were offensive and, if anything, worse than those that got Lott ousted from the Senate leadership in 2002. What Lott said then was the country would have been better off if 100-year-old Strom Thurmond had been elected president. Lott probably did not know — although he quickly found out — that Thurmond in 1948 ran for president as a so-called states rights candidate and that his platform had only one plank: racial segregation. Trent Lott was all of 7 when old Thurmond campaigned as a segregationist.

Lott was quickly ousted as majority leader for his clumsy misstep. That’s because President George W. Bush was unwilling to have his party led in the Senate by a man who could even make such an error.

Contrast the Bush White House with the Obama White House. Reid’s comments are the very definition of racism. There’s no way to whitewash what he said. Kaine only made it worse. But Obama praises Reid for the “heavy lifting” he’s doing on health care.

Reid will doubtless be there to welcome back Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W-Va.). Byrd gets a pass for his early membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Maybe there’s a political statute of limitations at work there. But Byrd also gets a pass for talking about “white n—–s” as recently as 2001. Byrd used the N-word not as young and immature politician but as the Senate’s president pro tem!

Basic fairness should require that when public servants make overtly racist comments, they should be required to step down from their leadership roles. Actually, the Democrats ought to welcome this opportunity to unload Reid. Even before this, he was a disaster.

Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council. He serves on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association, the Club for Growth and the National Taxpayers Union.

To read the full article on Politico.com click here.

WASHINGTON — Some married couples would pay thousands of dollars more for the same health insurance coverage as unmarried people living together, under the health insurance overhaul plan pending in Congress.

The built-in “marriage penalty” in both House and Senate healthcare bills has received scant attention. But for scores of low-income and middle-income couples, it could mean a hike of $2,000 or more in annual insurance premiums the moment they say “I do.”

The disparity comes about in part because subsidies for purchasing health insurance under the plan from congressional Democrats are pegged to federal poverty guidelines. That has the effect of limiting subsidies for married couples with a combined income, compared to if the individuals are single.

To read the full article click here.

Obama’s promises were a cynical ruse. Instead of transparency, Obama has given us a partisan game of hide the ball. Deliberations on the most sweeping social reform legislation since the Great Society are taking place behind closed doors, cloaked in secrecy, with negotiations among only one political party, all unfolding away from public view in a smoke-filled room. The result is the corruption of the legislative process on a scale rarely seen in American politics: pay-offs, earmarks, special favors, and vote-trading that borders on bribery. What does Obama have to hide? Based on what we know of what the White House traded to get Ben Nelson’s vote, the answer is plenty.

As Pete Wehner points out here, this undermines the very rationale for Obama’s presidency, which was supposed to offer a new style of post-partisan, honest politics. Regardless of what happens on health care reform—and we will continue to fight the good fight in opposing it—-these lies will come back to haunt Obama. America is not Venezuela. We have a right to open, transparent, and honest government, especially when the issue at hand involves our health and the lives of our loved ones. By denying the American people that right, purchased with the precious blood of patriots who surround us like a great cloud of witnesses, Obama will reap a whirlwind at the ballot box in 2010.

TRENTON — The State Senate on Thursday rejected a proposal that would have made New Jersey the sixth state in the nation to allow marriages involving same-sex couples. The vote was the latest in a succession of setbacks for advocates of gay marriage across the country.

After months of intense lobbying and hours of emotional debate, lawmakers voted 20 to 14 against the bill, bringing tears from some advocates who packed the Senate chambers and rousing applause from opponents of the measure, who also came out in force. The vote ends the effort to win legislative approval of the measure, and sets the stage for a new battle before the New Jersey Supreme Court.

“We applaud the senators for upholding a time-tested institution: marriage,” said Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, which has argued that gay marriage would weaken the social fabric by redefining one of society’s bedrock institutions.

To read the full article click here.

Now Obama’s real-life 3 a.m. phone call has come, and he has flunked the test. When a Nigerian national trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen boarded a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day and tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines aircraft carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members, it was one of the most significant attempted terrorist attacks against the homeland since the war on terror began. After first claiming the foiled terrorist plot was the work of an “isolated extremist,” falsely implying that he was not part of al-Qaeda or another terrorist network, it took Obama days (while he played golf in Hawaii) to step before the cameras and acknowledge the obvious: a massive, systemic, and nearly disastrous failure of intelligence.

Obama reticence to lean into this terrorist attack with the full force of his role as commander-in-chief is part of a larger whole. First, his administration banned the use of the phrase “war on terror,” as though pretending it did not exist would make it go away. His secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, bragged to a German publication that the new term was not “terrorist attack,” but “man-made disaster.” (to read the full interview click here) Imagine the possibilities! I suppose that would make an earthquake a “divinely engineered hiccup of the tectonic plates.” People might still die, but the term sounds so less militaristic and…Cheney-esque.

Napolitano actually went on CNN to claim that “the system worked.” To watch the video click here. The statement resembled a self-parody so thoroughly that it could have aired on “Saturday Night Live” unedited with a dubbed laugh track. Obama, in full recovery mode, is now hosting all-hands-on-deck meetings in the Situation Room of the White House, ordered up a full review of what led to the intelligence failure, and is vowing to take corrective action. But in a sense, his attempts at catch-up are insufficient.

As Charles Krauthammer points out, Obama still stands by his administration’s decision to treat Abdulmatallab as a “suspect” rather than an “enemy combatant,” giving him full Miranda rights, and allowing him to lawyer up so we can get no information about his al-Qaeda handlers. Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post: “The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.”

My sense is that American politics will resemble Israeli politics in the future. Which is to say that security will be the paramount political issue, with leaders judged harshly for their ability to defeat the terrorists and protect the homeland. This was certainly the case with the government of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, buffeted by the failures and miscalculations of the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2007, which led to the defeat of the Kadima party in the next election.

I recall my first visit to Israel in 1994. The Oslo accords had recently been signed, and a strained and uneasy peace with the PLO prevailed. I met with Benjamin Netanyahu, then a back-bencher in the Knesset. I asked him what he thought would happen under the new accords. He replied matter-of-factly, “Someone will perforate the security cordon, innocent civilians will die, and we will discover too late that we were insufficiently diligent in protecting ourselves against a sworn enemy.” That is of course exactly what happened, and it helped to elect Netanyahu prime minister the first time. Now he finds himself back in office, carried along by a wave of popular sentiment that too much negotiation with terrorists by predecessor governments led to less security, not more.

Obama is beginning to suffer a similar judgment by the American people for his failure to understand the nature of the current conflict. His Cairo speech, while eloquent and inspiring, seems strangely incongruous against the backdrop of the suicide bombing killing seven CIA agents in Afghanistan, the Fort Hood shooting, the murder of Americans at a military recruiting station in Little Rock, and the attempted downing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by a terrorist.
Hillary was right: Obama was not ready. We can only hope and pray that he will get ready quickly. Whether he wants to use the term “war on terror” or not, the war is joined, we have implacable enemies who want to destroy us and kill our citizens, and our government must acknowledge the existence of the war and aggressively prosecute it on all fronts.

Thank you so very much. Are you having fun?

You know, I’ve been reading a lot about you lately…you un-American evil-mongers. You don’t look so scary to me. You’re polite, well-behaved, well-dressed, seemingly law-abiding citizens. (Laughter)

But you’re scaring the living daylights out of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the mainstream media. (Applause)

You know why? Because they thought we were finished. They wrote the obituary of the grassroots movement for faith and freedom. Well, I’ve got news for them. In the words of Mark Twain, the premature reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated. (Cheers)

Beginning today, right here, right now, they are no longer running America and we are taking our country back.

Today we are launching in the state of Georgia the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a new grassroots venture that is changing America for the better.

After the 2008 elections, when our values took a tremendous loss at the polls, a number of people came to me and said, “Ralph, you have to do something.” I have to be honest with you: my first reaction was to say no.

Not because I did not think that something needed to be done, but because I knew that I was not worthy to lead it. I had failed and come up short in so many ways…as a husband, a father, a businessman, a believer and a person of faith. I did not consider myself to be role model for anyone.

But then I realized that God is not looking for perfect people. He’s looking for broken and repentant people. He’s not looking for the proud, the arrogant and the spiritually self-sufficient. He calls the humble, the contrite, the outcasts and those who are down on their luck. Those who for all their fears, failures, flaws, and foiables will say, “Here am I. Send me.”

So I answered that call and you answered that call. To rearrange our lives and give up our own interests and ambitions to do whatever is necessary to preserve America, the last, best hope for mankind.

Your opponents may smear you, calling you names like evil, angry mob, and fascistic.

But I’ve got news for them. We will not be intimidated, we will not be silent, and we will not go away. Our right to speak freely and petition our government has been purchased with the sacred blood of those who paid the ultimate price and bore the ultimate burden that we might be free. We do not take that freedom for granted. (Applause)

That is why we are launching the FAITH AND FREEDOM COALITION. Our goal is the build the strongest, most inclusive, and most effective grassroots organization in our nation’s history.

Our goals are within five years to have:

- 3 million members and supporters
- 3,000 local and online chapters
- 1 million volunteers
- A nationwide database of 10 million prequalified conservative voters

Our plan is simple. First, stop the extreme Obama agenda in its tracks beginning right now, right here, today. (Applause)

No more stimulus plans larded with waste, fraud and abuse.

No more of a pork-laden budget, filled with earmarks galore, that blows a $1.8 trillion hole in the deficit.

No more of a failed economic policy that has already cost 2.5 million Americans their jobs, with unemployment at 9.5 percent and rising.

Then there is Obama’s health care plan. (Boos) This health care plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will cost $1.6 trillion, raise taxes by $800 billion, cut Medicare by $500 billion, devastating our seniors, and ration care to children and the elderly.

No more of a foreign policy that apologizes to America’s enemies and coddles dictators while undermining our strongest allies, including Israel.

I would like to have a president who is as eloquent in defending America’s honor as he is apologizing for her alleged misdeeds.

Second, we will forward a bold, conservative reform agenda based on the principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes to create jobs and opportunity for all, and respect for the sanctity of marriage, life and the family.

In Ronald Reagan’s words, we will unfurl a banner of bold colors, not pale pastels, lifting a standard to which the faithful can repair. At the same time, we will build bridges to those who have not always felt welcome in our ranks: African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, young people, and women.

Ronald Reagan once said, “The sole purpose of America is to act as a refuge and an alternative to tyranny. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Let us restore that promise. Let us make America once again a refuge from tyranny and a beacon of hope for the entire world. Thank you and God bless you.

The old saw that there are two things one does not want to see being made—sausage and legislation—-is doubly true in the case of the Reid bill. Nelson postured as a statesman acting on principle, but he turned out to be just another Washington politician playing “let’s make a deal” in a smoke-filled room. More specifically, according to Politico , he bargained and got a provision permanently exempting Nebraska from the increased Medicaid expenses that come from increasing the threshold for Medicaid recipients to 300 percent of the poverty level, an unfunded mandate that will wreak havoc on state budgets in the coming years. It is the mother of all unfunded mandates, and Nelson made sure as the final hold-out that he got a get out of jail free card.

According to the New York Times, Nelson left a marathon meeting in Harry Reid’s office on Friday night to consult with a Nebraska pro-life activist. After a 90 minute absence, he came back to announce that the compromise language contained in the 388-page manager’s amendment was acceptable. How he could have arrived at such a conclusion is inexplicable. As the National Right to Life Committee has fully detailed in a letter to the U.S. Senate, the manager’s amendment represents the largest expansion of taxpayer funds to pay for elective abortions since Roe v. Wade. It claims to avoid direct subsidies through a meaningless accounting gimmick where those purchasing private insurance pay a surcharge, but there is no requirement that it be explained what the surcharge is for, and no requirement that they be informed in advance that that they can opt out. The “opt out” provision offered to states forces state legislatures to enact future laws to prohibit what is already federal law—taxpayer funds shall not be used to subsidize elective abortions. Why did Nelson hold out for so long, only to cave so cravenly on principle? The Nebraska Right to Life Committee has called his action a “betrayal,” and the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference is now publicly on record opposing the Reid bill, calling Nelson’s language unacceptable. By what reasoning does Nelson claim the bill fixes the abortion problem when the entire pro-life community is saying otherwise?

This episode breeds cynicism and leaves voters with the sense that Washington is completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Up to 61 percent of the American people say they oppose this bill, and yet Reid and the Democrats are rushing to pass it in the middle of the night under the cover of a blinding snowstorm. They will pass health care reform—if the public’s views have to be ignored, so be it.

The good news is this process is not over yet. The House and Senate bills are irreconcilable on several critical points. The House bill contains the public option; the Senate bill does not. The House bill contains Stupak-Pitts, genuine pro-life language that 67 Democrats voted for in the House; the Senate bill contains the Nelson fig leaf. Bart Stupak, the lead Democratic sponsor, has said he will not vote for any final legislation that does not include the House language.

What do conservatives do now? In sharp contrast to Nelson, conservatives should keep fighting. If we rally the faithful, we will either defeat this terrible piece of legislation, or the Democrats will pay a heavy price for passing it at the ballot box in 2010. We will be rewarded by the voters for standing in the gap when there were view of moral courage and philosophical convictions who stood and spoke for them.

Dean left the reservation after Harry Reid, prodded by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, caved to Joe Lieberman’s opposition to the latest “compromise” public option proposal, which included a “buy in” to Medicare for beneficiaries aged 55-64.

First reported by the blog Plum Line, Dean gave an interview to Vermont Public Radio, bluntly denouncing the evolving Senate legislation as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate.”

Joining conservatives who have called for hitting the restart button, Dean called for killing the Senate bill and essentially starting over:

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

According to Plum Line, Dean had previously endorsed the Medicare buy-in compromise, saying the question was whether the bill contained enough “real reform” to be worthy of liberal support. Given his street cred on the left—-in many ways Dean’s 2004 campaign was the precursor to Obama’s appeal to liberal primary voters in 2008—Dean’s opposition will no doubt further inflame the liberal blogosphere against the Senate bill.

Later, Dean took to the airwaves to voice his opposition, appearing on MSNBC’s “Countdown” program and urging that the Senate bill be killed. To watch the video click here.

We don’t often find ourselves in agreement with Howard Dean. But this is one time we are on the same sheet of music, if for different reasons: Kill the Senate bill and start over.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely GOP primary voters finds Crist and Rubio each with 43 percent of the vote. Five percent prefer another candidate, and nine percent are undecided.

Crist’s support has fallen from 53 percent in August to 49 percent in October. Rasmussen Reports noted at the time,
“The fact that Crist has fallen below 50 percent in a primary against a lesser known opponent suggests potential vulnerability.”

To read the full article click here.

As the U.S. Senate debates health care legislation backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House, a new grassroots organization has launched a campaign opposing the bill that targets centrist Democratic Senators who will hold the key to the bill’s fate.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition, a grassroots public policy organization with 75,000 members and supporters in 225 local chapters nationwide launched the campaign opposing cloture on the Reid bill. The campaign, expected to cost approximately $500,000, includes radio ads, newspaper ads, grassroots mailings, phone banks, and Internet banner ads.

The campaign is beginning in Arkansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Virginia and Indiana. According to FFC officials, the campaign may expand based on the legislative debate in the U.S. Senate.

The FFC ads urge defeat of the Reid bill because it includes “$500 billion in new taxes, a half trillion in Medicare cuts that hurt seniors, 118 new bureaucratic agencies and programs, and an unfunded mandate that will cost the states billions in new Medicaid spending.” To hear one of the radio ads, click Health care Ad. The ads began airing in the states yesterday.

In addition, Faith and Freedom Coalition state leaders and local chapters will distribute literature in churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship and at community events. They will also utilize phone trees and email blasts to turn out supporters to visit the offices of Senators Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Jim Webb and Evan Bayh.

“We consider a vote for cloture to be a vote for government-run health care,” said Jason Dore, a director of the Louisiana Faith and Freedom Coalition. “We will tell Mary Landrieu that we consider a vote for ending debate on this bill to be a vote for socialized medicine.”

“The voters of Virginia sent a message loud and clear in our recent elections that we don’t favor the extreme Obama agenda,” said state Senator Steve Martin, chairman of the Virginia Faith and Freedom Coalition. “There is little that could be more harmful to our liberty and quality of life than the passage of legislation that leads to government-run health care.”

Senate Democrats were caught flat-footed by Lieberman’s statement. They had assumed that they could count on his support for the latest “compromise” version of the public option: an expanded version of the Federal Employee Health Care Plan that would be open to consumers and subsidized by the government, combined with a “buy in” to Medicare by those aged 55-64. That “compromise,” which in many ways was worse than the original public option because it hastened Medicare’s massive and looming unfunded liabilities and deficit, was rumored to be getting what one Hill source told me was a “very bad number” from the Congressional Budget Office. Now it appears to be dead even before the CBO gives it a number. Which means Reid is back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, support for Obamacare is imploding in the polls, making Democrats even more nervous than they already were about the 2010 elections. Fox News has a new poll out that finds that only 41 percent of the American people want Congress to pass health care reform this year, while 54 percent prefer that Congress “do nothing on health care for now.” A whopping 57 percent oppose the health care reform legislation currently being debated in Congress. The truth is the Reid bill is disastrous public policy, and most Americans want Congress to “hit the restart button” and begin anew.

I never thought CNN would show public sentiment even more hostile to Obama than Fox, but the latest CNN poll finds that only 36 percent of the American people support the Senate version of Obamacare, while an astonishing 61% oppose it. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said it would increase the deficit, and a large majority say it will increase their taxes.

The smart money inside the beltway continues to be that health care legislation in some form will pass and be signed into law by President Obama. But the smart money has been wrong before. Obamacare appears to be in serious jeopardy of going the same way that Bill Clinton’s plan for health care did in 1993-1994. What is driving this downward spiral is the increasing conviction among Democrats that continuing to talk about health care is political suicide when voters are concerned about jobs and the economy. A huge new federal entitlement program that costs $2 trillion is not something that we can afford at a time of the worse recession in post-World War II history.

If Reid can’t herd the cats in the Senate and find a way to get to 60 votes for cloture, soon, then health care will slip into 2010, an election year. That was the last thing the Democrats wanted, and it portends political trouble for them in the off-year elections if it unfolds.

TRENTON — A state Senate vote on legalizing same-sex marriage in New Jersey is expected to be delayed, its two prime sponsors said today.

“I’ve been inundated. Hundreds and hundreds of emails, phone calls,” said Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman (R-Somerset) who voted against the bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee. “My staff’s ready to walk out. The phones ring from the time they come in to the time they walk out the door.

Sens. Ray Lesniak (D-Union) and Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) said the bill — which was up for passage on Thursday — instead will likely be introduced in the Assembly Judiciary Committee in preparation for a vote by the lower house.

To read the full article click here.

Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama’s immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage. Bush’s support came shortly after he launched the war in Afghanistan in response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

To read the full article click here.

This vote has spurred the Right to Life movement to call for the defeat of the current health care legislation. In a statement yesterday the National Right to Life Committee stated:

A majority of senators today voted to keep abortion covered in the proposed federal government insurance program, and to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand. Now, the vote on cloture on the bill itself will become the key vote on whether to put the federal government into the abortion business. We will oppose cloture on the bill, which would require 60 affirmative votes.

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ’slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ’slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.

When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn’t quite right.

When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today.

Republicans retorted that Reid’s comments “offensive” and “unbelievable.” But Reid did not back down. He argued that Republicans are using the same tactics employed in the pre-Civil War era to stall progress.

To read more click here.

But we do know this much: Gen. George Casey, the Army Chief of Staff, raced to the Sunday morning talk shows to express his deep concern. Gen. Casey’s concern was not for American victory in the war on terror, nor for the safety of the American people, nor for the safety of U.S. military personnel. Gen. Casey’s greatest concern was for diversity.

He said that if diversity were a “casualty,” then it would be an even greater tragedy than the murders of fourteen innocent Americans.

If we want to know how such an obvious terror threat was ignored, how such a mass killer was enabled, we need look no further than the command climate created by Gen. Casey and his politically correct subordinates.

If you are serving in a forward unit of the Army today, can you have confidence that your fellow soldier can be trusted to “have your back”? Can you sleep soundly in an Army barracks wondering whether your bunkmate might be a jihadist?

Unit cohesion is essential to any effective fighting force. Troops must trust one another when their lives are on the line. By winking at treason, Gen. Casey and his subordinates allowed Major Nidal Hasan’s conduct to taint every Muslim currently serving in the U.S. military.

No one has a right to serve. Service is an honor and a privilege, but it is not a right. Colorblind people and people with heart murmurs are perfectly loyal Americans. It casts no aspersion on them or their families to be excluded from military service.

All military personnel in the U.S. Armed Forces must demonstrate their loyalty to the United States of America. When they raise their right hand and take that oath before God to protect the Constitution of the United States “from all enemies foreign and domestic,” Americans have a right to expect that that oath will be enforced. No one gets a pass.

Gen. Casey has clearly failed to do this. No action could reassure our troops more in the wake of the worst case of domestic terrorism since 9/11 that national security and loyalty to the United States is the first requirement for military service than the dismissal of Gen. Casey.

Our all-volunteer military should know that even a four-star general is held to the same high standard that we expect of the lowest-ranking enlisted man or woman. From now on, it should be understood by all our serving men and women that you can report disloyal, insubordinate, and treasonous statements by anyone in the military and that that report will be acted upon promptly.

Only if this lesson is forcefully taught by the prompt, public dismissal for cause of Gen. Casey will the troops have renewed confidence that they can trust all their fellow soldiers. They must know that the United States will be loyal to them as they are loyal to the United States.

In this, as in so many things, George Washington said it best. In his historic letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport in 1790, he wrote:

[The] Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Notice this strong pledge of respect for rights of religious minorities comes with a stern requirement: All good citizens must give their “effectual support.” Can anyone say that Major Hasan — after more than a decade of taxpayer-funded education and special treatment — gave the United States his effectual support? Of course not.

There were warning signs aplenty. Many of the shooter’s classmates and fellow officers raise concerns about this man’s loyalty and reliability. The command climate created by Gen. Casey stifled those warning cries. The result is the death of innocents. Gen. Casey must be replaced as Army chief of staff.

Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

One of the more indefensible taxes is the Individual Mandate Tax. Starting in 2014, those who do not purchase “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax as high as $2,200 for a family of four.

Another tax is the Employer Mandate Tax. It states that if an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $750 for all full-time employees. For millions of small business owners, this is a job-killing tax.

A new Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans penalizes the most expensive health insurance policies, so-called “Cadillac” policies. Supposedly aimed at the wealthy, this tax will fall hardest on many of the nation’s high-risk jobs such as, firefighters and coal miners are Cadillac policies.

The bill also includes an Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals, stating that hospitals will be charged $50,000 each if they fail to meet new “community health assessment needs,” “financial assistance,” and “billing and collection” rules and regulations set by HHS.

To read more about the taxes, fees, and gigantic new bureaucracies contained in Harry Reid’s bill, click here.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.

To read the full report on Rasmussen Reports click here.

WASHINGTON — The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion that could blow up the fragile political coalition behind President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

A top Obama administration official on Thursday praised the new Senate health care bill’s attempt to find a compromise on abortion coverage — even as an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said Sen. Harry Reid’s bill is the worst he’s seen so far on the divisive issue.

The bishops were instrumental in getting tough anti-abortion language adopted by the House, forcing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to accept restrictions that outraged liberals as the price for passing the Democratic health care bill. Reid, D-Nev., now faces a similar choice: Ultimately, he will need the votes of Democratic senators who oppose abortion to get his bill through the Senate.

So far, Reid has steered the Senate bill in a direction that abortion rights supporters can live with: allowing coverage for abortion in federally subsidized health care plans, provided that private funds are used to pay for the procedure. But abortion opponents say his compromise would gut current federal restrictions on abortion funding.

GOP senators and governors stepped up their opposition to the bill Thursday, assailing the measure as a collection of tax increases, Medicare cuts and heavy new burdens for states.

Despite criticism, there were growing indications Reid would prevail on an initial Senate showdown set for Saturday night. He needs a 60-vote majority to advance the bill toward full debate, expected to begin after Thanksgiving and last for weeks. It’s during that debate that the battle over abortion will be joined in earnest. Reid will need to clear another 60-vote hurdle before senators cast their final vote on the bill.

At the White House on Thursday, health reform director Nancy Ann DeParle praised Reid’s effort to find a compromise on abortion.

“It was carefully worked through by the leader, who cares a lot about making sure this maintains the status quo on abortion policy,” DeParle told reporters. Obama has said he wants the bill to remain neutral on abortion, and DeParle said Reid struck just the right balance.

But Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops’ conference Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said Reid’s “is actually the worst bill we’ve seen so far on the life issues.”

He called it “completely unacceptable,” adding that “to say this reflects current law is ridiculous.”

The legislation is designed to answer Obama’s call to expand coverage, end industry practices such as denying coverage to people with health problems and restrain the growth of health care spending.

Democrats put the price tag of the 2,074-page measure at $979 billion, higher than the $849 billion figure they had cited Wednesday as the cost of expanding coverage to 31 million who now lack insurance. Republicans calculated it at more like $1.5 trillion over a decade and said even that was understated because Reid decided to delay implementation of some of the bill’s main features until 2014.

On abortion, the bill would forbid including coverage for the procedure as a required medical benefit. However, it would allow a new government insurance plan to cover abortions and let private insurers that receive federal subsidies offer plans that include abortion coverage.

In all cases, the money to pay for abortions would have to come from premiums paid by beneficiaries themselves, kept strictly separate from federal subsidy dollars. Government funds could be used for abortions only in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother — reflecting a current law known as the Hyde amendment.

The Hyde amendment restrictions apply to Medicaid, military health care and the federal employee health plan. Many states provide abortion coverage to low-income Medicaid beneficiaries, but they must do so separately with their own funds.

Abortion opponents say Reid’s bill circumvents Hyde. For example, they say that any funds a government insurance plan would use to pay for abortion would be federal funds by definition — even if the money comes from premiums paid by beneficiaries.

“All the money the government has starts out being private money,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for National Right to Life. “Once the government has them, they’re federal funds.”

The restrictive language passed by the House would forbid any health plan that receives federal subsidies from paying for abortions, except as allowed by the Hyde amendment. Women would have to purchase separate coverage for abortion services.

Abortion rights supporters say that fencing off government funds from private premiums would achieve the same goal, without forcing women to get special coverage for a legal medical procedure now routinely included in many private health insurance plans.

Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.

To read the letter from Catholic Bishops click here.

One of the reasons liberals are so hostile to public expressions of Christianity is because it threatens the monopoly that the religion of liberalism enjoys in the public square. The late Ted Kennedy was more than a leading senator, to liberal supporters. He was a secular saint. His appeal was essentially religious. He made it fairly explicit in his famous concession speech to the Democratic National Convention that re-nominated President Jimmy Carter. Kennedy reduced thousands of liberal delegates to tears with this emotional peroration: May it be said of our Party in 1980 that we found our faith again. And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

“I am a part of all that I have met
[Tho] much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are –
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. Not for Ted Kennedy the cool rationalism of his party’s founder, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson had famously said “if I had to go to Heaven in a political party, I would not go at all.” For Ted Kennedy and for those weeping delegates, the Democratic Party holds that place that used to be reserved for church and church alone. It’s no wonder that those teary believers—more than 90 percent of whom tell researchers they never go to church—end their search for the meaning of life in political activism.

Analyze Kennedy’s Epistle to the Gentiles and you will see that the concern, the work, the cause, the hope, the dream that is the subject of his panegyric is government. Government giveth and Government taketh away. The only Government worthy of that capital G is one that provides health, education, and welfare. All Americans are invited into the Democratic Church. Only the heretical conservatives are excluded.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was at the Kennedy School at Harvard last week. Liberals go to Harvard the way Muslims go to Mecca. Pelosi was basking in liberal approval for having been the first Speaker to deliver on the promise of universal health care. She established her bona fides early in her sermon. “For thirty years I’ve been an advocate of single payer,” she said. Single payer is liberal speak for socialized medicine, run entirely by the state, paid for by the state. But we have to make some tactical compromises, she said. Well, there may have to be a few little detours on the road to the Heavenly Liberal City.

“We all have our theology in politics,” she said to murmurs of approval from her audience. When Gov. George W. Bush said in a Republican debate in 2000 that Jesus Christ was his favorite political philosopher, liberals were aghast. But when Nancy Pelosi speaks of “theology,” we must assume she uses the word the way Webster defines it: “the study of religious faith, practice, and experience; especially : the study of God and of God’s relation to the world.”

For Pelosi, God commands universal health care without a restriction on funding abortion. And God apparently also commands the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. Pelosi invoked the patron saint of San Francisco. She recited the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. It was probably the first time in history that that gentle saint was dragged in to bless the slaughter of innocents and the abolition of matrimony. Predictably, there were no ACLU protests. And no atheizers ran to MSNBC to deplore her breaching the Wall of Separation between Church and State.

Pelosi was perfectly free not only to preach her religious ideas, but to impose jail time and fines on those who dissent. In the Gospel According to Nancy, the liberal Preacher of the House promises to bring the liberal Heaven to Earth. Is it any wonder growing numbers of Americans think it’s a living hell?

Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a visiting professor at Liberty University School of Law.

This uncontrollability—her rogue qualities—-are what explains the Palin phenomenon. Too many national politicians in both parties are automatons, over-coached, scripted by high-priced handlers, (in Obama’s case, tethered to the teleprompter), their language shaped by focus groups, their posture suggesting they are fearful of their own shadow. In a sea of programmed mannequins, Palin’s candor is refreshing, even disarmingly so. Little wonder that even as they lambaste her, the pundits and talking heads cannot resist talking about her—and they pine for the ratings and book sales she delivers.

In seconding the nomination of Grover Cleveland for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884, former Union general and Wisconsin Congressman Edward S. Bragg enthused, “We love him for the enemies he has made.” He was referring to New York’s Tammany Hall machine, and like Cleveland, Palin ran as an anti-machine candidate, taking on the good-ole-boy network of the Alaska GOP when she ran for Governor in 2006. This is a second part of her appeal: she is beholden to no one except the voters.

The criticism of Palin’s book as self-serving is unfair and untrue. Certainly she settles scores; one would expect no less from a political memoir worth reading. But she is self-critical of her performance in the interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, even as she argues that it was poorly handled by the campaign. She also writes movingly of learning that she was carrying a Down Syndrome baby, and her empathy and understanding for women who find themselves in a troubled pregnancy and might consider abortion. The vignette reveals a capacity for self-awareness and for connecting with others that it is an important attribute in any leader. Palin chose life, and gave witness to her faith and her values with deeds that spoke louder than words.

Palin is in fact an archetype of American politics: the Joan of Arc candidate battling the forces that would seek to control her or bring her down. In Dark Horse, I wrote about a fictional woman vice presidential nominee named Betsy Hafer (the first woman on a national ticket since 1984). Hafer is a gifted instinctive politician, extremely attractive with a wardrobe to match, and has been a governor for less than two years and is thus relatively untested on the national scene. Chosen by the presidential nominee to unite his divided party and shake up a race he is losing, she slips up in several media interviews and is quarantined by her handlers and the campaign staff back at headquarters. After leaks panning her performance, she kicks several of the staff off her plane and starts flying around the country speaking freely and connecting with the voters as she pleases. Dark Horse was written in the spring of 2007 and published in June, 2008. When McCain selected Palin three months later, I nearly fell out of my chair. I’ll never tell who the real inspiration for the Hafer character was, but the narrative arc of Palin’s selection, meteoric rise, and then victimization by self-serving leakers who sought to blame her for the party’s defeat was all too predictable. Geraldine Ferraro experienced it a quarter century ago, and future national women politicians will endure similar mistreatment. The way the national media kicked around Palin (and to a lesser extent, Hillary Clinton) suggested that sexism is still alive in our politics.

With “Going Rogue,” Palin gets to speak on her own, free from the restraints of a national campaign and unfiltered by the media gatekeepers. The book is well-written, honest, revealing, and compelling. What the future holds for Sarah Palin is anyone’s guess. But based on her governorship, the 2008 campaign, and the phenomenal success of her book, it certainly won’t be boring. My guess is that she will be a force in American politics for years to come.

After months of dodging high-profile confrontations over abortion, Democrats — including President Barack Obama — find themselves faced with a stark set of alternatives: Support a bill that imposes limits on access to abortion or demand one that might, however indirectly, fund the procedure with taxpayer money.

“You can’t have it both ways. If you’re subsidizing private insurance policies, then you are either paying for it with tax dollars or you’re not,” said Ralph Reed, the former executive director of the Christian Coalition, adding that abortion “looks increasingly like it is a major cleavage running through the Democratic Party and that has potentially huge implications, not only for health care but for the 2010 election.”

It’s the kind of decision point the White House and Democratic leaders have consistently attempted to avoid. By playing down divisions over abortion and emphasizing shared goals — such as reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in the United States — members of the president’s party have sought to blur the lines of one of the country’s most furious and enduring debates.

To read the full article click here.

Gallup now reports:“Republicans have moved ahead of Democrats by 48% to 44% among registered voters in the latest update on Gallup’s generic congressional ballot for the 2010 House elections, after trailing by six points in July and two points last month.”

To read Gallup’s full report click here.

But they show scant interest in the civil war that is now roiling the Democratic party over health care reform. MoveOn.org has raised $3.6 million to air ads attacking Democrats in the Senate expressing reservations on Obamacare, and going after the 39 House Democrats who took a walk on Nancy Pelosi’s Big Government.

As Byron York reports, it appears that an ideological purge is underway in the Democratic party, courtesy of MoveOn and the far-left.

To read Byron York’s full report click here.

by Ken Blackwell
The Washington Post published an editorial last week criticizing President Obama’s policy toward Iran. To recognize how significant this is, we should recall candidate John F. Kennedy’s needling of his opponent, Richard Nixon, in the 1960 campaign. Noting that The Wall Street Journal had decried Nixon’s performance on economic issues, Kennedy impishly said, “That’s like L’Osservatore Romano criticizing the Pope.” Well, the Post is not exactly like the Vatican’s official house organ, but this is a new and perhaps alarming turn. When even the liberal Washington Post begins to worry over this administration’s foreign policy, it’s time for us all to take notice.

During last year’s successful drive for the Democratic nomination, candidate Obama was thought to have made a major gaffe when he promised to approach the murderous mullahs who rule Iran “without preconditions.” His opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, jumped on that statement as evidence that Obama was unprepared for the serious challenges of the presidency. It was then that she struck back with her now famous “3 o’clock in the morning phone call” TV ad, implying that the untested Obama wasn’t ready to take that crisis phone call.

To read the full article click here.

Without his teleprompter, Barack Obama looks decidedly uncomfortable in this interview with ABC News’ Terry Moran addressing the subject of abortion funding in the House-passed health care bill. In this video clip, Obama dissembles like the law school professor he once was, offering a weak, tired “on the one hand, but then on the other hand” defense of the bill.

The truth is less savory: Obama, Reid and Pelosi cannot pass health care reform without kicking their pro-choice base in the teeth. After it became clear that Pelosi could not pass big-government health care reform without caving to the demands of the U.S. Catholic bishops and pro-life Democrats, the Speaker allowed Bart Stupak of Michigan to offer an amendment that prohibited coverage for abortion services not only in the government-run plan, but under any private insurance policy that was subsidized with federal funds. Sixty-four Democrats voted for the amendment. This prohibition is likely to cover all private policies for private sector employees making up to $88,000 a year—four times the poverty level.

Is this the change that liberals voted for? Likely not. House pro-choice Democrats are hopping mad, vowing to sink the final bill if the Stupak amendment is not removed in conference committee. Good luck with that. Pro-choicers are the new Tony Rezko of American politics: Obama used them to get where he wanted, then threw them overboard.

As Wall Street Journal reporter William McGurn notes here.

Ralph with Democratic strategist Steve Murphy in Fox green room practicing newfound civility after GOP victories on election night.

When fully phased in over ten years (2014-2023), the bill would increase gross new federal spending by $3 trillion, explaining why 39 House Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing the bill.

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, voiced strong concerns about the detailed cost estimate, highlighting the “smoke and mirrors” game that the Democratic majority is playing by misleading how the gross new spending of $1.7 trillion is allocated over the next ten years. In fact, most of this new spending does not take place until 2014 and once fully phased in the total price tag exceeds $3 trillion!

Senator Gregg’s also raised concerns about the $628 billion cuts to “critical Medicare and Medicaid funding” and the $1.2 trillion increase in taxes and fees. Simply stated, the House Democratic bill will ring up to a total $3 trillion that neither we, nor future generations, can afford.

A new grassroots organization played a major role in getting these voters to the polls — the Faith & Freedom Coalition was founded by Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, in May 2009. Starting only a few months before the election, Reed’s FFC was able to generate 4.5 million voter contacts in Virginia, New Jersey, and the 23rd Congressional District of New York for the November 2 election.

To read the full article click here.

Perhaps that is why the White House spin machine—personified by David Axelrod and David Plouffe—-went into overdrive to suggest that truly salient fact that came out of 2009 was the impending civil war between conservatives and moderates in the Grand Old Party.

This is utter nonsense. I certainly understand the desperation of surveying the wreckage after election night and looking for any silver lining in the disastrous outcome. But NY-23 was an aberration, not a pattern, and in so far as it represented any trend at all, it was a positive one for conservatives and ultimately for the Republican Party.

First, NY-23 was a special election caused by the selection by Obama of former Congressman John McHugh as Secretary of the Army. Under party rules, the GOP nominee was selected by a an executive committee of county chairman in the district—not by primary. Their selection, Dede Scozzafaza was not only to the left of her own party and the district, she was actually to the left of the Democratic nominee, Bill Owens. Scoz favored same-sex marriage and had voted for it twice in the state Senate (a position to the left of that of Barack Obama), while Owens demurred on gay marriage, favoring civil unions instead. Owens opposed card-check, Scoz favored it. Not surprisingly, conservatives chose to support Conservative nominee Doug Hoffman, and Scozzafaza’s campaign imploded.

It was an important message for conservatives to send to the Republican party. This was not a “raging war” on moderates in the GOP, as some in the media and the Democratic party have tried to claim. Everyone understands Reagan’s dictum that an 80 percent friend is not a 20% enemy. But conservatives cannot be expected to knock on doors and make phone calls for a candidate to the left of Barack Obama on key issues facing their state and nation.

I spoke to a Democratic campaign consultant who was involved in NY-23, and he told me he could not believe that the Republicans had nominated someone so far to the left, thus dividing the party. He also told me that their polling showed that Hoffman was on his way to victory until Scoz endorsed Owens in the closing days of the campaign. That, again, is an aberration, unlikely to be repeated in many key races in 2010 or beyond. It does happen (recall Senator John Warner’s support for Marshall Coleman in the 1994 U.S. Senate race in Virginia between Oliver North and Chuck Robb), but rarely.

The more likely future for the GOP was seen in Virginia, where a stalwart conservative, Bob McDonnell, won the strong backing of prominent moderates like former Congressman Tom Davis, Bobbie Kilberg, and John Warner. McDonnell never trimmed his philosophical sails and never back-tracked on his pro-family, tax-cutting, pro-growth views, but his moderate temperament and inclusive leadership style attracted the support of not only moderate Republicans and 2 out of every 3 independents, but even prominent Democrats like Sheila Johnson, wife of BET founder Bob Johnson. I never heard a single complaint from moderates in the party about McDonnells’ conservative views or his background as a Regent University graduate or favorite of the pro-family community. They respected his views and admired his ability to build bridges as a leader and problem-solver. Conservatives should look for more McDonnells in the years to come if they truly want to become a majority again.

The Republican Party is not a church. It does not promulgate doctrine and then exclude those who fail to share it. But political parties stand for something, or they will be unable to generate enthusiastic support from the volunteers needed to burn shoe leather and calories winning competitive elections. That was the real lesson of NY-23 for the Grand Old Party: stand for your principles.

Dede Scozzafava’s record in the New York State legislature was pro-tax, pro-abortion, and anti-marriage. She even accepted the endorsement of ACORN. But she got the local party elders’ support, based on nothing other than their calculated desire to maintain partisan supremacy, regardless of conviction.

Doug Hoffman’s defeat was not about forcing the Republican party to take an “extreme” position. Hoffman was and is clearly in line with the GOP national platforms that gave Ronald Reagan national leadership victories. Reagan, it should be remembered, was the last Republican to carry New York State for president — and he did so twice.

To read the full article click here.

McDonnell defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds in a replay of their race for attorney general four years ago, which McDonnell also won. He will be Virginia’s first Republican governor in eight years and gives the GOP reason for optimism that the Democratic trend that climaxed with President Barack Obama’s carrying the state in 2008 may not have been permanent.

To read the full story at Politico click here.

But even with the White House taking an unusually strong hands-on role in a statewide race – dispatching the president’s pollster and even President Barack Obama himself for two stops Sunday – Corzine was ousted amid low approval ratings and a sour economy.

Christie became the first Republican to win statewide in New Jersey in more than a decade, leading 49 to 44, with independent candidate Chris Daggett pulling just 6 percent, with 92 percent of the vote counted.

To read the full story at Politico click here.

CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby

RICHMOND, Virginia (CNN) – Sarah Palin isn’t staying out of the Virginia governor’s race after all.

Less than 48 hours before voters head to the polls to elect a new governor, several Virginians reported receiving robocalls on Sunday from the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, urging them to “vote your values” on Tuesday.

But the recording makes no mention of the Bob McDonnell, the Republican gubernatorial candidate who has been reluctant to embrace Palin during the governor’s race, out of fear that she might alienate some of the independent voters who have helped him climb to a healthy lead in the polls over Democrat Creigh Deeds.

To read the whole story from CNN click here.

The theme of the event was “WE HAVE ONE YEAR UNTIL WE TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AT THE BALLOT BOX IN THE 2010 GENERAL ELECTION. THE CLOCK IS TICKING….”

Other speakers and performers included Radio talk show host and Fox News contributor Herman Cain, award winning country music recording artist, John Berry, author and political pundit, Jonathon Krohn, radio host, Martha Zoller, and radio personality Larry Wachs.

Congressman Phil Gingrey, and Congressman Paul Broun also spoke about the healthcare bill championed by Speaker Pelosi.

On the eve of the 2009 elections, two angry white men have worked themselves into a froth. Both are liberals. Frank Rich, former New York Times theater critic and “butcher of Broadway” now directs his venom at those in politics, and especially conservatives. Rich claims that the surge of conservative Republican Doug Hoffman in New York’s 23rd district and Dede Scozzafava stepping aside signal that “GOP Stalinists,” a “wacky, paranoid cult” have invaded New York and launched “nothing less than a riotous and bloody national GOP civil war.” Read more here.

Mmmm. And I thought it was only a congressional race in upstate New York. At least Rich didn’t compare us to Mao.

The second angry white liberal male outraged at the turn of events in NY-23—Doug Hoffman now leads in most polls—is David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 campaign. He’s got a new book out, but is getting more questions launching his book tour about the 2009 elections. Plouffe doesn’t seem to have much interest in talking about the gubernatorial races. Who can blame him? Creigh Deeds has been thrown under the bus by the White House and trails by double digits in many polls. Jon Corzine is in a race too close to call in New Jersey after outspending his opponent Chris Christy three-to-one. No, what has Plouffe’s ire up is what he alleges is a full-blown effort to purge moderates and drive them from the Republican Party. He couldn’t say enough about it this morning on the Today show.

Here are the facts: eleven county Republican chairmen in the 23rd district chose a Scozzafava as the GOP nominee after interviewing the candidates. She is, to be charitable, far to the left of the center, not only of the Republican party, but of the district. As a state Senator, she voted repeatedly for higher taxes and more spending, supported Obama’s stimulus package, voted twice for same-sex marriage, and was endorsed by a party controlled by ACORN. Not surprisingly, voters in the district turned to a center-right candidate, Doug Hoffman, who after being rejected by the party bosses ran as the nominee of the Conservative Party. This is no different than James Buckley winning a Senate race in New York in 1970 as the Conservative nominee. The only thing this development signals is that the grassroots, not party bosses in smoke-filled rooms, should choose the party’s nominees. Which is why progressives pushed for party primaries in the early twentieth century—to give the people a voice. Are Rich and Plouffe now in favor of party bosses rather than the people choosing our leaders? I don’t remember them being similarly outraged when most of the Democratic party bosses lined up behind Hillary Clinton and the liberal grassroots of the party supported Obama.

Pete Wehner does a great job showing the paranoia and rage are actually on the left—and that “Mr. Rich’s tantrum” and Mr. Plouffe’s feigned outrage are really signs that conservatism is actually healthy and doing well.

When liberals get angry and start faxing helpful suggestions to the GOP and conservatives, you can be sure they don’t have either’s real interests at heart. My best advice to the GOP: ignore any advice offered by the media or Obama campaign operatives. They don’t want you to win. Listen to the conservative grassroots, embrace principle, and nominate candidates who stand for conservative values. You will be richly rewarded by the voters.

Ralph Reed is making his mark…again..

The former head of the Christian Coalition is taking an extremely active role in the Virginia Governor’s race. His group, the “Faith and Freedom Coalition” was out in force this weekend knocking on doors armed with voter guides that focus on faith and family issues. Reed was actually out there himself knocking on doors with the rest of the volunteers this weekend in Richmond. Watch the video of Reed knocking on doors below:

To read more at CBN News click here.

1. In what three ways is the Republican Party better off today than it was on the night Barack Obama won the election?

The Republican Party is better off because it is regaining credibility by standing athwart the Obama spending spree and shouting, “STOP!” This is critical to independents, who are anxious about the long-term deleterious impact of Obama’s policies. Second, Republicans are becoming a less Washington-centric, grassroots party. The Tea Party movement has exemplified this bottom-up grassroots phenomenon, much of it spread virally on the Internet. The GOP is most effective and nimble when ideas and activism bubble up from the precincts, not down from DC. Exhibit A is what has unfolded in NY-23. Third, the party is fielding better candidates. Bob McDonnell in Virginia is the archetype of a new breed of Republican candidate who is philosophically conservative, gifted from a leadership standpoint, and temperamentally inclusive and a bridge-builder.

2. In what three ways is the Republican Party not better off today than it was on the night Barack Obama won the election?

A. Not having an overarching, identifiable leader

B. Not having the megaphone afforded by control of the White House or Congress.

C. Currently lacking a strong enough farm team, where much work remains to be done.

3. What are the three biggest obstacles facing the Republican Party as it attempts to comeback from the 2006 and 2008 losses? Can be related to Question 2 or not.

First, not becoming viewed as merely and reflexively anti-Obama. Second, avoiding the mistake of relearning the wrong lessons of the past. Trying to win independents by becoming more “moderate” is likely a failed strategy. What the American people are hungering for is authenticity and leadership. Republicans should be who they are, say who they are, and stand up for what they believe in. The final challenge is competing effectively with Obama’s ground game. The GOP—or outside issue organizations—must build a state-of-the-art grassroots organization that marries the technology of the Internet with traditional shoe-leather tactics.

4. What is the biggest demographic challenge facing the GOP: young voters; Latinos; suburban women?

Probably Latinos because they are growing as a percentage of the electorate and are now the swing vote in states representing one-third of the electoral college, including Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California. In 2008 John McCain received 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, which is a recipe for long-term minority status. Because Republicans support the rule of law with regard to immigration, they must find a way to talk about that issue in a way that does not turn away like-minded Hispanics. There are millions of Latinos who share the values-oriented, entrepreneurial spirit of conservatives. But if we don’t tell them we care about them and that our vision for the future of the country includes them, Latinos will not respond to our message.

5. Who best defines the party for those people who identify themselves as Republicans?

For social conservatives and many women, it is Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. For economic conservatives, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence, and Tom Coburn and former Club for Growth president Pat Toomey (their number one Senate priority in 2010). Newt Gingrich also has a strong following on television, radio and the Internet. There is no single leader, as Reagan was in the late 1970’s or Gingrich was in the 1990’s. That is an altogether healthy thing for a party in transition.

6. Who best defines the party for those who people who identify themselves as independent or loosely aligned Democrats?

In states where the Governor is a Republican, it is the governor. This is often overlooked, but the governors act as the titular head of the party in many states. Nationally, it is an amalgam: John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and the emerging crop of GOP presidential candidates (Huckabee, Pawlenty, Romney, et al.) In many 2010 states, it is the emerging candidates for Governor and U.S. Senate: Blunt in Missouri, Meg Whitman and Poizner in California, Bill McCollum in Florida,

7. What most unites the Republican Party today?

Resisting out-of-control spending because it simultaneously limits government (the fiscal wing of the party) and reigns in failed social policies (social conservatives). As government expands, freedom contracts, and so does the power and responsibility of individuals, churches and synagogues, and families. Limiting government and enhancing what Edmund Burke called “little platoons” of freedom and compassion unite economic and social conservatives.

8. What most divides the Republican Party today?

The issue on which there is the least consensus is probably who should be the presidential nominee in 2012. Not since 1964 has a race for the GOP presidential nomination been so wide open. Rank-and-file Republicans may have grown wary of nominating the person who has waited the longest or can claim it is “their turn.” The royalist impulse of the party seems to be on the wane, in part because of the remarkable emergence of Obama in 2008.

Bonus question: On balance, are the Tea Party movement and the Beck-Limbaugh-Hannity wing of conservatism helpful or harmful to the Republican Party’s future—long term and short term?

Both are ultimately healthy because democracy requires outside voices to hold the those in power accountable. The Populists of the late-nineteenth century forced the Democrats to wrestle with issues of rural isolation and economic justice. The same was true of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement in the 1960’s. The pro-family movement had the same effect in the GOP in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Social reform movements are the new wine that pours into the old wine skin of the political parties, often causing discomfort, but always causing growth. The tea party movement, talk radio, and the Internet are a modern manifestation of this age-old phenomenon and they represent a legitimate and modern expression of citizen activism.

Faith and Freedom volunteers passed out specialized Halloween door hangers telling voters “Don’t be tricked, Stand up for your values. Vote Tuesday, November 3rd.” These get-out-the-vote door hangers also featured a voter guide displaying the positions of the candidates for Governor on key issues. Some of the issues that this year’s voter guide highlighted were taxes, environmentally sensitive offshore oil drilling, spending, transportation, marriage, and the right to life.

Of the strong turnout across the state, in spite of rain showers, Steve Martin said: “Faith and Freedom is on the march in Virginia. We have trained and mobilized thousands of volunteers and undertaken millions of voter contacts to voters who have previously not been involved in the political process. We are confident that we will have a record turnout on Tuesday in the Old Dominion. Today’s turnout was fantastic.

Doug Hoffman

What a difference two weeks can make. Toward the end of an Oct. 14 conference call organized by David Keene of the American Conservative Union, congressional candidate Doug Hoffman plaintively asked, “Does anybody know how to get Glenn Beck interested in this?”

Monday afternoon, Hoffman was interviewed on Beck’s popular Fox News program, evidence of the surging momentum the Conservative Party candidate has experienced in the three-way special election campaign in update New York’s 23rd District.

In the past six days, Hoffman has been endorsed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, former National Republican Congressional Campaign chairmen John Linder and Tom Cole…

The complete list of Hoffman endorsers is a long one, and seems to include nearly every Republican except Newt Gingrich and Dede Scozzafava, the later of whom is Hoffman’s opponent, and the former her only prominent supporter. According to the two most recent polls, the liberal Republican Scozzafava is now in third place, while Hoffman has pulled ahead of Democrat Bill Owens.

To read the full story in the American Spectator click here.

The Basswood Research poll has Hoffman at 31 percent, Democrat Bill Owens at 27 percent and Republican Dede Scozzafava at 20 percent. The Club is supporting Hoffman in the race.

To read more from the Hill click here.

Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, two Republicans widely viewed as possible 2012 White House hopefuls, weighed in Thursday night on the closely-watched special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district. They chose very different approaches – but neither endorsed the GOP candidate.

Calling it a matter of principle, Palin – the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate – bucked her party and enthusiastically endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava. The race has attracted national attention, especially from grassroots activists
who accuse Scozzafava of not being conservative enough to run under the Republican party mantle.

“Doug Hoffman stands for the principles that all Republicans should share: smaller government, lower taxes, strong national defense, and a commitment to individual liberty,” the former Alaska governor wrote on her Facebook page. “Political parties must stand for something.” Palin then urged her supporters to donate to Hoffman, who she said “has not been anointed by any political machine.”

Just minutes before she made the announcement, Pawlenty happened to be speaking to reporters in Washington after a fundraiser for his new political action committee. The Minnesota governor refused to make an endorsement when asked about the race.

As if that were not enough, a new Democracy Corps poll—this is the poll run by James Carville and former Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg—showed more storm clouds for Obama. Carville and Greenberg marketed the poll as showing that conservatives are out of touch with mainstream America in their concerns about Obama’s big-government, socialistic agenda. A lot of the mainstream media bought that line. But Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies has dug deeper into the data of this Democratic poll, and found some striking facts.

The poll looked at 40 Democratic-held seats and 20 Republican-held seats that are likely to be the most hotly contested in the country. It found the Democrat incumbents have lost a net of 10 points on the generic ballot:

The generic ballot showed similar challenges for the Dems. In Dem seats, the Dem generic ballot lead shrunk from 39% GOP/52% Dem to 45% GOP/48% Dem (movement was similar in both Tier 1 and Tier 2). That’s a net ten point shift for the GOP challengers. However, Dem challengers went the wrong direction — in GOP seats in April, the GOPer lead 48%-42%. That lead is now 48%-39%.

A year is an eternity in politics, and it is far too early to make any predictions about 2010. But coming from two prominent Democratic strategists, this slippage for Democratic incumbents must send chills down the spines of the White House staff and the Blue Dogs they are counting on to vote for government-run health care.

The only thing dumber than proceeding forward on a government-run health care plan that may cost the Democrats dozens of seats in Congress is the White House’s war on Fox News. Fox is watched on a weekly basis for some period of time by 39% of the country. While its viewership is 50% self-identified Republican, it is also heavily independent and 20% of its viewers are Democrats. Based on the ratings, the Obama administration can reach more Democrats by going on Fox News than it can on MSNBC or CNN.

Beyond the ill-advised politics is a larger point. America is not Venezuela. When the head of state and his political minions appear to be trying to marginalize, punish, and delegitimize news organizations that they deem deemed hostile, it has a chilling effect on the dissemination of news, which is vital to a free society. Criticizing a news article or news piece as unfair or biased is one thing—that is fair game. But publicly attacking a major news organization and seeking to reduce its influence through intimidation hurts all Americans. My hunch is this political attack on Fox News will backfire, not only leading to higher ratings for Fox but more conservative votes by independents turned off by an attempt to silence the administration’s critics.

President Obama and Creigh Deeds

Instead, Obama’s campaign stop has become an empty, meaningless gesture. In the Washington Post, an unnamed White House sources and senior Democratic party officials are throwing Deeds to the curb, complaining that his campaign has failed to heed their advice and has distanced himself—and this appears to be the ultimate transgression—from the Great One, President Obama. As Bill Pascoe notes in his recent article one now wonders what Obama can possibly say in Hampton Roads on Tuesday. Maybe it will resemble his visit to New York state the other week, which occurred right after the White House let it be known that it did not want Governor David Patterson to be the Democratic nominee for Governor in 2010. Obama’s campaign stops are starting to look like a combination of pat on the shoulder and a knife in the back.

Finger-pointing and blame-gaming are nothing new when campaigns take on the smell of a loser. But the attempts by the Obama White House to shift the blame for this apparently impending defeat in the Old Dominion don’t add up. First, Obama hand-picked Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia to chair the Democratic National Committee, who also happens to be the head of the Virginia Democratic Party. The objective was to nominate a so-called centrist in the image of Kaine and Senator Mark Warner, and Deeds fit that bill. So the White House and its hand-picked DNC Chairman are calling the shots—but they’re not to blame? That does not pass the laugh test.

Second, the WaPo article claims that Kaine urged Deeds to put forward his own positive agenda, and not just ferociously attack Bob McDonnell. But Deeds did that, putting an ad up of Mark Warner saying Deeds would follow the tradition of his and Kaine’s focus on jobs, economic growth, and education. The ad fell flat.

The truth is Barack Obama is a drag on Deeds, not the other way around. His job approval rating in Virginia hovers around 40%. His big-government health care plan, card-check legislation, and failed stimulus package hang around Deeds’ neck like a dead weight. No amount of spin to the Washington Post will change that fact.

Doug Hoffman didn’t have a chance to make his case to Republican voters in a primary in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. That’s because the local GOP establishment chose its candidate behind closed doors, in a formerly smoke-filled room. The Republican grass roots never had a chance to choose among qualified candidates.

And the National Republican Congressional Committee compounded this error by jumping into the contest with both left feet.

That matters. Hoffman is a genuine Reagan conservative in a district that generally votes in that direction. Now, some smart people argue that in some districts, only a moderate Republican can get elected. That’s what coalitions are all about. We cannot get all we want all the time. Even the Gipper would campaign for some Republicans I was less than thrilled about. He understood the importance of building a majority in Congress.

To read the full story at Politico click here.

A special election will be held on November 3 in upstate New York that may send a much-needed message to the GOP. New York Congressional District 23 was put up for grabs when nine-term Rep. John McHugh, a Republican, resigned to become Secretary of the Army. The eleven Republican chairs of the district nominated Dede Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman and the first female minority leader pro tempore.

The social conservative wing of the GOP, well into a mounting rage over the direction of the nation under President Barack Obama, wasn’t in the mood to accept a pro-choice, pro-homosexual marriage candidate endorsed by the Working Families Party, known for its close ties to ACORN.

To read the full article click here.

So, since my friends across the aisle at Democracy Corps didn’t spend a whole lot of time or focus analyzing the results for the public, I will do that heavy lifting for my faithful readers.

To read the full article by Glen Bolger click here.

Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good — but carries no heft.

It was only the Olympic Games, the White House will argue — not a high-stakes diplomatic gamble with North Korea. It is always worthwhile when Mr Obama sells America to the rest of the world, David Axelrod, his chief political adviser, said today. But that argument will fall on deaf ears in the US. Americans want their presidents to be winners.

To read the whole story click here.

Local conservative leaders turned out to help launch Faith and Freedom Coalition state affiliates in New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Reed laid out a gameplan for the future of the FFC and a vision for robust grassroots organizations at the state and local level.

After the banquet Reed, Bill Stephens, the CC of Florida Executive Director, and the FFC COO Jack St. Martin, met with grassroots activists from around Florida for an organizational and training session.

In the 2006 campaign season the Washington Post ran more than a dozen front-page stories on Senator George Allen’s reference, at an August 11 campaign stop almost 400 miles from Washington, to an opposition campaign staffer as “Macaca.” One of these stories, perhaps, had enough news value to be worthy of the front page; the others were placed there with the obvious intent of defeating Allen and electing his Democratic opponent Jim Webb, who did indeed win by a 50%-49% margin.

Now there’s a campaign on for governor of Virginia, and the news editors of the Post seem to be using their front page once again to defeat the Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell, and elect Democrat Creigh Deeds.

Barone, of course, is not alone in seeing the parallel. It could be argued that it was not coverage of the “Macaca” comment itself — but the Washington Post’s relentless daily assault on Allen — which ultimately doomed his candidacy.

To read the full story at Townhall.com click here.

To read a full transcript of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech click here.

Calling the news “a challenge made to the entire international community,” President Sarkozy said that “if by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken.”

To read the full article from ABC News click here.

Readers who are familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome will recall that it refers to a hostage-taking 1973 incident in that Swedish capital city. Over time, the hostages began to look to their captors as friends and protectors rather than the murderous kidnapers that they truly were.

We are seeing something similar in what I call the Camp David Syndrome. President Obama has just announced the latest effort toward crafting a Middle East Peace Settlement. That grand-sounding title is Beltway-speak for “let’s lean on Israel to gain some street cred with the Euros.” He’s chosen Hillary Clinton as his negotiator.

To read more of this story at The American Spectator click here.

WASHINGTON (BP)–Southern Baptist leaders were among nearly 50 religious and conservative leaders who called Sept. 22 for swift action by the U.S. government to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

In a letter to President Obama and Congress, Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt and ethics leader Richard Land joined others in urging a boycott on arms sales to the militant Islamic regime and economic sanctions on firms that conduct oil-related business with Iran.

“For the world’s most dangerous regime to obtain the world’s most dangerous weapons is something that neither the United States nor the community of civilized nations can allow,” they said in the letter.

To read the full article in the Baptist Press click here.

Conservative Leader Phyllis Schlafly

Many of the battles that are being fought out now–from the defense of marriage and the fight against abortion in healthcare to the effort to protect women from being ordered into combat—would have been lost if Phyllis had not sounded her trumpet call against this grave threat to family life and liberty in America. Feminist icon and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wanted to ban separate prisons for men and women, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, and recruit the young for Person Scouts only. Imagine what Justice Ginsburg would have done with an ERA as a battering ram.

To read the whole article by Ken Blackwell at Worldmag.com click here.

“A colleague of ours has called for an investigation into a major health care company because this company informed its customers of its concerns about health care legislation that this colleague of ours introduced…

Is this what we believe as a Senate — that this body should debate a trillion-dollar health care bill that affects every American while using the powerful arm of government to shut down speech? Is this how citizens and companies can expect to be treated if health reform passes? That any health provider that disagrees with a powerful Senator will be subject to an investigation and a gag order?”

To read the article Senator McConnell is referencing click here.

In fact, it did the opposite. When the networks were allowed to use one clip on their Friday evening news broadcasts, all of them aired a question on race. The other news coming out of the interviews was Obama’s reticence to support General Stanley McCrystal’s request for additional troops for counter-insurgency operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Again, this does little to advance government-run health care, and only serves to underscore (along with undercutting our Czech and Polish allies by removing planned missile defense installations in those countries) the signals of weakness and vacillation the administration is sending in the global war on terror.

What was the only health care news that came out of the interviews? That Obama stated a falsehood about the Senate Finance Committee health care bill. George Stephanopoulos pointed out that a mandate is a tax, according to dictionary definitions. Obama dismissed the point. But the Baucus bill includes a mandatory tax of up to $3,800 per family for those who don’t purchase health insurance. [“Mr. Obama and most Democrats support a proposal that would require most Americans to carry health insurance. Under Mr. Baucus’s proposal, a family that went without coverage would be subject to a penalty of up to $3,800 a year.” (Robert Pear and David Herszenhorn, “New Objections To Baucus Health Care Proposal,” The New York Times, 9/14/09) This only serves to underscore that the White House’s health care problem can’t be solved by a media blitz.

Obama’s presidency is beginning to resemble a Jerry Lewis telethon in which every day is Labor Day. In nine months in office, Obama has given 200 speeches, four prime-time news conferences, two addresses to joint sessions of Congress, and granted 125 one-on-one media interviews. By way of comparison, the famously locqacious Bill Clinton granted only 46 press interviews during the same period in his first term. Does he enjoy the spotlight too much? One wonders. Even a liberal like Bill Mahrer has urged Obama to quit posing for the cameras and do his job.

The Obama White House seems to think that the solution to every problem is to put its general out on point. The administration’s answer to every ill is another speech, another interview, another reinforcement of what at times appears to be a cult of personality. But overexposure cheapens the coinage of the realm of the presidency, demystifies the office, and diminishes Obama’s stature, robbing him of the very influence he seeks over the legislative agenda. When the President of the United States is more exposed than Paris Hilton, this is more than a political problem for Obama. It is a problem that plagues the institution of the presidency, and we are all the less for it.

Former President Carter tells “NBC Nightly News” that racism has surfaced in opposition to President Obama.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American,” Carter told “NBC Nightly News.” “I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that shares the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans.”

“That racism inclination still exists, and I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people — not just in the South but around the country — that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply,” Carter said.

Michael Steele, who is the first African-American to chair the Republican National Committee, denied Wednesday that race is fueling protests.

To read more from CNN click here.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Colorado voters finds Bennet trailing former Republican Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton 45% to 36%. Norton formally announced her candidacy on Tuesday.

To read the whole story at Rasmussen Reports click here.

The first Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of the 2010 race shows Sue Lowden beating Reid by 10 percentage points, 50% to 40%. Lowden is chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party and the preferred candidate of the Republican party establishment.

GOP hopeful Danny Tarkanian beats Reid by seven points, 50% to 43%. Tarkanian is a former basketball player for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas and the son of a legendary college basketball coach.

To read more at Rasmussen Reports click here.

Well, the results are in, and my prediction has proven even more true than I thought. First, the new Gallup poll shows that six out of ten voters think Obamacare will make things worse, not better, and will lead to loss in the quality of health care and higher taxes on the middle class. Obama’s job approval is identical to 2 Gallup polls in August, and his disapproval rating is now 43%—the highest recorded in the poll. Susan Page of USA Today has a good rundown here.

The new ABC/WaPo poll shows the same results. George Stephanopoulos blogs that the speech was “no game changer.” The poll shows Obama’s job approval rating has fallen three points since August, and support for his health care reform is an anemic 46%, with 48% opposed. Three times as many think Obamacare will hurt their coverage (37%) as think it will help (11%).

And Rasmussen finds that Obama’s health care approval numbers have fallen back down to pre-speech levels already.

How desperate is Obama? Well, yesterday, during his sojourn to the Big Apple where he played the sheriff to Wall Street, he broke bread and sought advice over a dutch-treat lunch with Bill Clinton. Yes, that Bill Clinton, who pushed health care in the last debacle and lost 53 House seats and 8 Senate seats. One wonders what’s next….Obama proclaiming, a la Clinton, that “the era of big government is over”? Don’t count on it.

What is remarkable is all this has happened during a virtual telethon for Obama in the media. A love-fest interview on “60 Minutes,” flower petals falling from an adoring press corps, and now a full Ginsberg on the Sunday shows this coming weekend.

It will all be for naught. When only one out of ten voters believe Obama’s health care reform proposal will make their coverage better, the plan is politically unviable. Obama’s problem is not a communications problem; it is a substance problem. No amount of censuring Congressman Joe Wilson, smearing tea party protestors, and apologizing for ACORN community organizers will change that fact.

By David Gardner, Mail Online

As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally organised by conservatives claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism.

The size of the crowd – by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January – shocked the White House.

Demonstrators massed outside Capitol Hill after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue waving placards and chanting ‘Enough, enough’.

To read more click here.

Did the speech work, which is to say, did it revive Obamacare? The preliminary evidence suggests that it did not. The latest Rasmussen survey shows an uptick of only 2 percent in support for Obama’s health care scheme, from 44 to 46 percent. Obama’s speech will likely lift his job approval and health care numbers for a while, but it will be ephemeral. Within a short period of time, the afterglow of the speech will fade, and we will be back to status quo antebellum.

The reason is simple. Obama’s problem can’t be solved with eloquence and speech-craft. The White House’s problem is not one of communications. It has to do with substance. The American people have reviewed the bidding on the health care issue, and they have decided (I believe with a certain finality) that they do not want a Big Government, one-size-fits-all solution from Washington that herds millions of people into a public plan and puts a bureaucrat between patients and doctors.

Most of the mainstream media’s focus (predictably) has been on Congressman Joe Wilson, who said during the speech, “You lie.” I am not defending Congressman Wilson’s remark, and, by the way, neither has he. The remark was ill-advised and inappropriate, and he swiftly apologized, as he should have. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and it was just as wrong for the President to tell falsehood after fib after misrepresentation after distortion about both his plan and his opponents’ opposition to it.

Obama’s speech was remarkable for its petulance, its partisanship, and its falsehoods. To put it mildly, President Obama told repeated falsehoods about his plan, falsehoods that were bald-faced, audacious, and shameless. Consider just a few of the dishonest statements in Obama’s speech:

First, he said, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.” If so, then the President should have announced his public opposition to the Senate leadership bill and H.B. 3200, the so-called tri-committee bill which is the House leadership’s approved legislation, months ago. In June the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the legislation will increase the budget deficit by $240 billion over the next ten years. That’s just the beginning. A new study by the Lewin Group finds that in the second ten years, it will increase the deficit by $1 trillion. The White House has publicly praised and supported both these bills. So Obama stated a whopping $1.24 trillion falsehood.

Second, Obama said he would not cut Medicare and affect basic care for seniors. On the defensive, he said that “Medicare is another issue that’s been subjected to demagoguery and distortion during the course of this debate.” He called Medicare a “sacred trust” and said “I will protect Medicare.” But the Obama plan includes $600 billion in unspecified Medicare cuts. It destroys Medicare Advantage with $250 billion in cuts, decimating a pro-consumer option that one out of every four seniors takes advantage of and allows them to choose the best insurance and doctor for them.

Even the Associated Press has called Obama on this lie. AP reported that “although wasteful spending in Medicare is widely acknowledged, many experts believe some seniors almost certainly would see reduced benefits from the cuts. That’s particularly true for the 25 percent of Medicare users covered through Medicare Advantage. Supporters contend that providers could absorb the cuts by improving how they operate and wouldn’t have to reduce benefits or pass along costs. But there’s certainly no guarantee they wouldn’t.”

Third, Obama took a cheap shot at Sarah Palin and others who have pointed out that the health care rationing implicit in the plan combined with panels of experts approving of certain procedures that allow younger patients to receive care while certain older patients are denied care based on a “quality of life” standard will lead inexorably to the denial of care to the elderly and the dying. Obama said —falsely—that Palin and others have claimed that “we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens.” This is totally false, and Obama knows it. What critics have pointed out is that seniors will be required to submit regularly to “end of life” counseling sessions (detailed on page 425 of H.B. 3200) that, combined with cost controls and rationing of care, could lead to them being denied life-saving treatment.

Moreover, as health care expert Betsy McCaughey, chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, has pointed out, the bill includes “substantial funding for comparative effectiveness research, which is generally code for limiting care based on a patient’s age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of treatment is divided by the number of years (called QUALYs, or quality-adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit.”

Fourth, Obama claimed that the bill does not use taxpayer funds for abortion. This is also false. The Democrats rejected amendments in a House committee that would have specifically excluded abortion from coverage under the so-called government option. In its place, the Democrats took the private portion of the premium (not the public subsidy) and specified that only those funds could be used for abortion services. This is an accounting gimmick. Funds in an insurance policy are fungible, and the fact is that abortion will be massively subsidized with billions of dollars in taxpayer funds for the first time in U.S. history.

Fifth, Obama claimed that his plan did not provide care for illegal immigrants. Here again, false. By rejecting a Republican amendment requiring proof of legal residence prior to receiving care under the government-run plan, the Democrats have opened the door for non-citizens and non-legal residents to receive care for which they have not paid into the system. If one refuses to require proof of citizenship or legal residence, one cannot claim to limit benefits to only citizens.

Joe Wilson has apologized; Obama has not. And when it comes to calling your opponents liars, Obama has no peer. He did so Wednesday night repeatedly. He previously held a conference call with liberal faith groups and accused his opponents of “bearing false witness.” He has told falsehoods about his own plan, repeatedly and shamelessly. As he has done so, he has not only taken the glow off his “Hope, Change” campaign mantra, he has diminished his office. That is a loss not only for his political team, but for all Americans.

Former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones

Politicians had been calling for Mr. Jones to resign after it was revealed in recent days he signed a petition supporting 9/11 conspiracy theories and called Republicans a series of vulgar epithets in a widely circulated video of a speech he made shortly before joining the Obama White House.

To read the whole story in the Washington Times click here.

Obama has been campaigning for both Gov. Jon Corzine, 62, of New Jersey and Creigh Deeds, 51, a state senator running for governor in Virginia. The president’s push for health care legislation and unprecedented federal spending on the worst financial crisis in 70 years has created headaches for his fellow Democrats, who both trail their opponents in the polls.

To read the whole story click here.

Organizing for America asked volunteers to contact their U.S. Senators on September 11. The request note that September 11th is “also known as Patriot Day in honor of the thousands of Americans killed by Al Qaeda terrorists eight years ago.”

A post by one of Organizing for America’s activists on the website went on to say, “All 50 States are coordinating in this – as we fight back against our own Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists who are subverting the American Democratic Process, whipped to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for their treacherous leaders.”

This is only the latest smear of grassroots citizens by the Obama machine. Their only crime has been to exercise their right to freedom of speech and to petition the government.

To read more on the story click here.

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Most voters now expect that the situation in Afghanistan will get worse over the next six months. That’s up fourteen points over the past month. At the same time, the number worried about a terrorist attack in the United States has declined.

To read the whole article from Rasmussen Reports click here.

Though President Barack Obama himself has accused pro-life advocates of lying about abortion funding in the bills, the White House web site was silent on the subject.

“You’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion,” he said recently. “Not true.”

Three weeks later, nothing has changed at the Reality Check web site (which replaces the controversial flag@whitehouse.gov email address), even though the web site has been updated several times since its initial launch.

A refutation of the analysis from pro-life groups and several media outlets that the legislation includes abortion funding still doesn’t exist on the site.

Read the rest of the Lifenews story here.

Over 1,200 grassroots activists packed into a ballroom at the Gwinnett Place Marriott this past Saturday to hear from nationally syndicated radio personality and Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Faith and Freedom Coalition chairman Ralph Reed, six gubernatorial candidates, members of Congress, and other national headliners, including Lt. Colonel Oliver North and Jon Voight.

The major purpose behind the Freedom Rally was to formally launch the Georgia state affiliate of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a new grassroots venture that is sweeping the country, forming chapters from coast to coast.  Reed also unveiled VoterTrak, the organization’s new online organizational tool, which will be used over the next decade to build a database of 10 million conservative voters.

Sean Hannity, who was in town for the Atlanta stop of his Freedom Concert tour, said to the enthused crowd: “I have a message for Barack Obama: No you can’t.”

The crowd waved American flags, sang patriotic songs, and held aloft signs that read: “Faith” and “Freedom.”  The activists spilled out into the lobby and filled the ballroom to capacity.

Reed spoke about the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s strategy for building a grassroots organization in all 50 states, focused on contacting elected officials on timely issues and legislation, registering voters, and identifying other voters who support conservative causes and candidates.  Every attendee at the rally was asked to commit to identify 25-50 voters utilizing FFC’s proprietary software, VoterTrak.

“Because you are taking a stand and opposing Obamacare, the pundits and Washington politicians have smeared you, called you names, and accused you of being evil and un-American,” proclaimed Reed to cheers.  “But I’ve got some news for them.  We will not be intimidated, we will not be silent, and we will not go away.”  Reed also pledged to “offer a bold, conservative alternative to the Obama agenda” and “build bridges to those who have not always felt welcome in our ranks: Hispanics, African-Americans, women, young people, and seniors.”

Jack St. Martin, chief operating officer of FFC, announced that the group started 42 local and online chapters in Georgia, and also had activists from North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and South Carolina in attendance who had expressed an interest in building FFC in their states.  A grassroots workshop attended by over 100 FFC activists took place after the rally to train volunteers and leaders.

After the rally and grassroots training workshop, hundreds of the attendees headed to the Gwinnett Arena for the Freedom Concert.

Great Photos From The Event

Sean Hannity Addresses The Freedom Rally Crowd