Does the Republican Party Have a Future?
by Star Parker
February 11, 2013
The United States, from day one, was a project about principles and ideals.
The super power that emerged and grew from the handful of colonists that began settling here was not the product of where those colonists happened to land, but the ideals and principles in their head and heart – applied in how they lived their lives.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to address one great blot on the nation’s founding legacy – the existence of slavery in a nation founded under the ideal of freedom under God.
Runaway slave and self-educated abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said “I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.”
Douglass called Abraham Lincoln, America’s first Republican president, “emphatically the black man’s president.”
When some thirty years ago I told the welfare officer to not bother showing up again at my home – when I decided that my own future would be based on the values of scripture, work, and personal responsibility - there was no doubt in my mind what party would become my political home.
The party of “freedom and progress,” the party of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
But, as longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
It‘s no mystery why the Republican Party is having a hard time today. No matter how hard you squint and try to discern the values of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, or any values for that matter, in those now wielding the money and power at the top of the party, they’ve disappeared.
These establishment Republican leaders and operatives are not about ideals and values but business – their own business.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is that unemployment will “remain above 7.5 percent through next year. That would make 2014 the sixth consecutive year with a jobless rate that high, the longest stretch of such elevated unemployment in 70 years.”
Yet the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 could not defeat the current occupant of the White House.
In the party that is supposed to be about freedom and personal responsibility, party operatives want to blame everyone else for their own failures.
Worse, they want to pin it on candidates who actually take seriously the traditional values of their party.
Karl Rove would like to weed out candidates like former Missouri congressman Todd Akin.
Akin, who was defeated by Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill in the Senate race in Missouri, was a six term Republican congressman with a flawless conservative record.
For most of 2012 he was ahead of McCaskill in the polls. Then, in August, he expressed himself poorly in an interview about abortion. Despite his apologies and efforts to clarify himself, his own party abandoned him.
McCaskill ran ads, over and over, showing the Republican’s own candidate Mitt Romney questioning Akin’s qualifications. This race could have been saved. But the party elite wasted not a second to dump Akin because they were not comfortable with his conservative values to begin with.
We’re living in a deeply troubled country today. Americans are looking for answers, not a political class feathering its own nest.
There are tens of millions of conservative American patriots who seek an opposition party to represent their conviction that America will not get back on the path to strength and prosperity without restoration of freedom, limited government, free markets, and traditional values.
Today’s big question is whether the Republican Party is going to be that opposition party.
If not, it is not conservative values and convictions that will be abandoned. It will be the Republican Party.
Read more: http://goo.gl/5b58l
CLEVER QUIPS
Never Retreat!
by Conservative Sue
February 9, 2013
I had an interesting conversation on Facebook earlier this week after posting this graphic.
One of my friends decided to use this as an opportunity to lambaste me for sticking to conservative ideals. To sum up our conversation ... she believed that Republicans lose because they support causes such as life, gun rights, traditional marriage, and securing the borders. I, of course, insisted we must stand for conservative principles, but I never really mentioned the fact that I was not a Republican (but, a conservative). This exchange with my Facebook friend got me to thinking: has the GOP establishment brainwashed the majority of conservatives into believing it is best to stay silent on principles to win elections? The answer to that question is NO. But, it will take a lot of work to undo the damage that is being done to the psyche of conservatives in this country, because there are a large number in the Republican establishment (aided by the conservative media) that share her views. We have a lot of work to do.
I am currently reading Erick Erickson's book - Red State Uprising: How To Take Back America and Erickson does a masterful job of explaining why retreating from conservative ideals not only results in a more progressive and growing government, but it actually diminishes opportunities for success. People are hungry for truth-tellers, for leaders who are passionate, articulate, intelligent, and who offer real and lasting solutions. People are tired of politicians who say anything, do anything just to get elected .. but then fail to deliver on any of their promises. People are tired of politicians who put loyalty to their party ahead of loyalty to this country and the American people. Voters detest candidates who hide their true convictions .. and despise those who pretend to support causes, when their actions are not indicative of that support.
We need to know what we believe and articulate those beliefs with confidence to those who are searching for answers. Conservatism may not be as popular as it was during the days of Ronald Reagan, but that is only because conservatives have been silent. We need a voice .. we need to step forth with boldness. Retreat is never a path to victory. Don't be duped by those who would crush the conservative movement in this country. Anyone who tells you that you should stay silent on your principles has either been deceived by the cautious and retreating Republican establishment, or they are actually working to wipe out the conservative movement. Neither of these groups are your friends.
Read more: http://goo.gl/q5MpY
Left-Wing Lickspittles: How the Huffington Post is Aiding Obama's Benghazi Cover-Up
by Joel B. Pollak
February 10, 2013
Normally, we at Breitbart News ignore the Huffington Post. It is self-consciously leftist, so there is little point in highlighting its rather comical bias, except when that bias filters into the mainstream media. Sunday night was just such an occasion, when HuffoPo ran two stories in succession that neatly captured the lickspittle mentality of the mainstream media towards President Barack Obama, and the danger it holds for our democracy.
The first story was headlined, “Obsessed.” It described the promised by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to block the confirmations of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan to the posts of Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, respectively, unless the Obama administration fully explained the president’s actions during the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sep. 11.
Graham is no wide-eyed ideologue. Many conservatives consider him a squish on core issues. (I was once present to hear Graham address a gathering of high-dollar donors. He admonished them about the need to address climate change, even using the odd term “carbon pollution” to describe fossil fuel use. One irritated donor turned to me and whispered: “That sound you hear is checkbooks slamming shut across the nation.”)
Yet Graham takes foreign policy very seriously, as well as the fate of Americans serving abroad. He has, after all, been one of them. In pursuing answers on Benghazi, he is doing what the mainstream media ought to have done, and what the nation wants to be done. He is also answering Obama’s challenge in November: “If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody [on Libya], they should go after me.”
It is the Huffington Post’s own dishonor that it would impute mental imbalance to a Senator who seeks the truth about how four Americans died--a truth hidden behind lies about YouTube videos, among other alibis. It is only through Graham’s firm persistence, for example, that we learned last week that Obama did not communicate with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta after an initial briefing about the attack that evening.
The second story on Sunday evening was headlined, “Commander,” and linked to a Washington Post story about how President Obama intends to use executive orders to pursue his policy goals in his second term, rather than working with Congress. Leaving aside for the moment that Obama now seeks the very executive supremacy he once denounced, there is something even more disturbing in HuffPo’s framing of the story.
The headline and image were clearly meant to be laudatory. The Huffington Post was praising Obama for exerting “command,” and gave the impression that both its editors and readers are eager to be so commanded. The idea of a president who not only ignores the opposition, but the very legislative process, matches Obama’s vision in last year’s State of the Union address of grafting a military model onto our political life.
That spirit, which has possessed much of the country’s press corps, fits fascism rather than democracy. The irony is that Obama was not the “commander” on that terrible night. We already know that neither he nor his Cabinet showed more than a passing interest in the fate of the Benghazi consulate and its personnel. To mock those seeking answers, and to praise Obama’s leadership, is to aid and abet a disgraceful cover-up.
Read more: http://goo.gl/MpHzn
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