Tag: 2010 Elections

California Results: This is not Defeat!

We were naturally discouraged at the poor showing of our California Republican candidates this election.  For your information the registration numbers in Los Angeles County at the time of the election are:

Democrats     2,260,449    51%
Republicans   1,048,609     24%
D-T-S             911,394     21%
Other parties    215,556      4%
Total           4,436,008

Democrats outnumber us by better than 2 to 1 in this County.


Statewide, the numbers are:

Democrats       7,615,452    44%
Republicans      5,353,264    31%
D-T-S             3,505,527    20%
Other parties      811,640      5%
Total              17,285,883


This is only one battle in a long war. 

Keep in mind that George Washington lost every battle he fought until the Battle of Trenton.  It would have been very understanding if he and the revolutionary troops had given up.  But despite losing every battle, many soldiers lost in battle, and huge numbers of desertions, Washington kept going until he succeeded.  We need to emulate that.

Redistricting will help in 2012.  We have to increase Republican registration, which we have found is not easy to do, but we must figure out how to do it.  We also have to convince Democrats that our policies work because we can’t win with Republicans only in California.

Jerry Brown, the Democrat legislature, the passage of the proposition where Democrats alone can now pass a budget will likely put California into a fiscal bind we will not be able to easily get out of.  I am not wishing for that, by the way, just the opposite.  I am just saying that is a likely outcome.  That may give us an opportunity in 2012 to come up with a plan to fix the state that will resound with non-Republican voters.

Big government, spending beyond our means, trying to take care of everyone who needs it, supporting the public service employee pension plans, putting unrealistic restraints and higher taxes on businesses, raising utility rates to pay for AB 32, growing the state government are all programs that are unsustainable.

We need to field a good group of California candidates very soon who will be prepared to do what they have to do to win in 2012.

The national scene was much rosier.  We have taken back the House with a substantial number of seats (possibly 65).  


We will be in a position to stop Mr. Obama’s reckless deficit spending and perhaps to reverse some of the terrible legislation that he was able to pass under the 111th Congress.  We will be in a position in 2012 to gain a majority in the Senate and to take back the White House if our elected legislators stick to our principles and do what they were sent there to do. 

An Open Letter to the Freshman Republican Victors

Erick Erickson wrote this article in Red State.  This is an important message to our freshmen Republicans who will go to Washington in January 2011.  They will be elected based on the conservative message they gave while they were campaigning.  It is essential that they stay on message and don’t get diverted by the politics of Washington away from protecting Americans through conservative principles.  The new Republican Congressmen will have the ability to show the American people how conservative principles make life better in America.  If they compromise on principle and yield to the big-government socialist-leaning Democrats, we will hold them accountable and replace them.  We cannot afford to have the Republican brand tarnished again.   GA

An Open Letter To The Freshman Republican Victors
By Erick Erickson

I am putting this up the Sunday before the election because in the noise and hubbub after the election it will be drowned out and it is very, very important.

If you are working on one of those challenger campaigns and will come into the House of Representatives and Senate after November 2nd, please read this and get your future Congressman or Senator to read it.

In the next 72 hours, you will be elected to the United States Congress. Suddenly you will find that you have friends you never knew you had. Remember that most of them are not actually your friends.

Many members of Congress will begin whispering sweet nothings in your ear wooing you to vote for them and their rules for the House and Senate. Remember that these same men are the exact same people that the voters rejected in 2006 and again in 2008.

Remember that every poll showing a Republican landslide on Tuesday also shows that the public hates these men.


Introduce yourself to Jeb Hensarling, Jeff Flake, and Jim Jordan. Talk with your fellow freshmen like Tim Huelskamp, Justin Amash, and Jeff Duncan. Those are the people who will become your closest friends who you’ll share a foxhole with when leadership fails you but a battle must be waged.

Remember that some of the people who will come to Congress with you, whether it is Charlie Bass or Steve Stivers or Kevin Yoder or Robert Hurt, etc. are unrepentant tax hixers and some will want to transcend partisanship to work across the aisle. You got elected by being the Party of No. Don’t let the sweet nothings of the Beltway suddenly convince you otherwise.

No is a very powerful word in Washington and it is not used often enough.

Finally, here is the last bit of advice I have for you today. Remember the GOP Pledge? One person — Barry Jackson, who is John Boehner’s Chief of Staff — single handedly had support for traditional marriage stripped from the Pledge and did so after showing a version of the Pledge to conservatives that had it in there to get their support.

One person and a staffer from John Boehner’s office no less.

When you get to Washington you will be told you need a professional staff of lobbyists, careerists, etc. to help guide you. You will be told that “you just don’t understand” or “you are naive” or “the School House Rock version of how a bill becomes a law is too simplified for the real world.”

The people telling you this are the people the voters hate and you should not trust. Largely they will be people in leadership, particularly staffers, who will soon depart for K Street where they hope to profit off their relationship with you. They will work with people like Trent Lott to try to co-opt you.

Fight.

Fight them.

Fight the idea that you must yield to their ways instead of them yielding to your ways. You, after all, have not been driven from power like these men have.

You will have friends you did not know you had who really are your friends when you stand up and fight your leadership. Do not let the Rules Committee be a tool of Leadership. Do not men like Jerry Lewis who helped drive us from power in 2006 remain in power. Do not let leadership have control over committee assignments.
Do not trust Mitch McConnell and Lame-R! Alexander and John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy even though they did so much for you. Remember, as much as they did for you, you are more important to them than they are to you. But for you, they would still be in the minority.

Do not trust the leadership’s staff. They view many of you as problems and potential disasters despite that you will vote more reliably Republican than their preferred candidates and pets.

You have it within you and with the word “No” to prevent the Republicans from going back to the ways that got them removed from office in 2006. Read this to find four easy ways to fix things once you get up there.

If you fight them you will be rewarded. If you succumb, the tea party will come for you in just a few short years.

Thomas Sowell – A Crossroads Election

Thomas Sowell – A Crossroads Election

An excellent analysis by renowned economist and author, Thomas Sowell, of the coming election.  This article appears in Townhall Magazine.

A Crossroads Election
By Thomas Sowell

Most elections are about particular policies, particular scandals or particular personalities. But these issues don’t mean as much this year– not because they are not important, but because this election is a crossroads election, one that can decide what path this country will take for many years to come.

Runaway “stimulus” spending, high unemployment and ObamaCare are all legitimate and important issues. It is just that freedom and survival are more important.

For all its sweeping and scary provisions, ObamaCare is not nearly as important as the way it was passed. If legislation can become laws passed without either the public or the Congress knowing what is in those laws, then the fundamental principle of a free, self-governing people is completely undermined.
Some members of Congress who voted for ObamaCare, and who are now telling us that they realize this legislation has flaws which they intend to correct, are missing the point.

The very reason for holding hearings on pending legislation, listening to witnesses on all sides of the issue, and having Congressional debates that will be reported and commented on in the media, is so that problems can be explored and alternatives considered before the legislation is voted into law.

Rushing ObamaCare into law too fast for anyone to have read it served no other purpose than to prevent this very process from taking place. The rush to pass this law that would not take effect until after the next two elections simply cut the voters out of the loop– and that is painfully close to ruling by decree.

Other actions and proposals by this administration likewise represent moves in the direction of arbitrary rule, worthy of a banana republic, with only a mocking facade of freedom.

These include threats against people who simply choose to express opinions counter to administration policy, such as a warning to an insurance company that there would be “zero tolerance” for “misinformation” when the insurance company said that ObamaCare would create costs that force up premiums.

Zero tolerance for the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution?
This warning comes from an administration with arbitrary powers that can impose ruinous costs on a given business.

Those who are constantly telling us that our economic problems are caused by not enough “regulation” never distinguish between regulation which simply enforces known rules, as contrasted with regulation that gives arbitrary powers to the government to force others to knuckle under to demands that have nothing to do with the ostensible purposes of the regulation.

As more businesses reveal that they are considering no longer buying health insurance for their employees, as a result of higher costs resulting from ObamaCare legislation, the administration has announced that it can grant waivers that reduce these costs.

But the power to grant waivers is the power to withhold waivers– an arbitrary power that can impose millions of dollars in costs on businesses that the administration doesn’t like.

Recent proposals from the Obama administration to force disclosure of the names of people who sponsor election ads would likewise open all who disagree with Obama to retaliation by the government itself, as well as by community activists and others.

History tells us where giving government one arbitrary power after another leads. It is like going into a Venus fly-trap, which is easy to enter and nearly impossible to get out of.

The headstrong, know-it-all willfulness of this administration, which threatens our freedom at home, also threatens our survival in the international jungle, because Obama seems determined to do nothing that will stop Iran from going nuclear.

The Obama administration goes through all sorts of charades at the U.N. and signs international agreements on sanctions that have been watered down to the point where they are not about to bring Iran’s nuclear weapons program to a halt. The purpose is not to stop Iran but to stop the American people from realizing what Obama is doing or not doing.

We have a strange man in the White House.

This election is a crossroads, because either his power will be curbed by depriving him of his huge Congressional majorities or he will continue on a road that jeopardizes both our freedom and our survival.

Socialism and Reality – Steve McCann

Steve McCann writing in The American Thinker:

The images on the television screen emanating from Europe are a sobering reminder that socialism has failed wherever it has been tried and will always do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers. The riots in the streets of France and Greece, the announced layoffs of nearly 500,000 government employees in the United Kingdom, and the potential national bankruptcy of Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are the current face of this failure.

Yet within the halls of power in Washington, D.C. there is a socialist/progressive cabal, and its titular leader Barack Obama, oblivious to this reality. These ideologues continue to cling to the belief that they have a unique ability to succeed where so many others have failed. The egocentric American Left know no bounds, and their determination to impose their will upon the United States has not and will not abate despite the results of any election.

Having been raised to believe in their preordinance to rule and incubated in an environment of national peace, prosperity, and a lack of adversity, these adherents to a powerful central government, with themselves at the controls, are incapable of change and admitting failure despite overwhelming current and historical evidence.

An important article very relevant to our times.  Please read it.

McCann concludes:

Within the United States, because of the socialist indoctrination of the governing class, this process is well on its way and will culminate, if not stopped now, in the end of this nation as an economic and military power.

The founding fathers of the United States, one of the greatest confluences of brilliant minds in the history of mankind, understood the basic nature of human beings. They accordingly set forth a form of government and written Constitution to greatly limit those who seek hegemony over the people and to limit the ability of the people to seek unlimited security from a central government. They recognized that only the individual free to pursue economic happiness will result in a society wherein all can benefit on a sustained basis.

President Obama and his minions represent the greatest threat to the United States since its founding. The images of failure from around the globe must not be lost on the American citizens. They must understand that the country’s destiny rests in utilizing the governmental structure bequeathed to them by the founders to strip away, as quickly as possible, the power expropriated by today’s ruling class. 

The winning of elections is tantamount. However, there must also be a concurrent resolve to purge the destructive and delusional philosophy of socialism from the institutions of government. Only then can the United States avoid the fate looming over the horizon.

Read the whole article, and let your liberal friends and family read it.