After reading this transcript from today’s Glenn Beck show, I now understand the wisdom of John McCain being the GOP presidential nominee.

STU: Why aren’t you happy? Big primary last night. We had to talk about Republican issues.
GLENN: John McCain won.
STU: Yeah, John McCain, Republican, frontrunner.
GLENN: We’re the Republican radio station.
STU: I know, I know. And John McCain’s Republican. Look at the odds right after his bid.
GLENN: What did you say?
STU: The Rs right after his name.
GLENN: But he is not really a Republican.
STU: No, I said John McCain, R.
GLENN: Have you seen his amnesty proposal?
STU: I know, it’s fantastic. I now love it.
GLENN: What do you mean you now love it?
STU: I now love it. It’s going to be great. The –
GLENN: We were on the air for months hating it.
STU: No, it was –
GLENN: This guy was in charge of the amnesty program. He partnered with Ted Kennedy.
STU: Yeah, I know. We love partnering with Ted Kennedy. I think this is the future of the party.
GLENN: You know who Juan Hernandez is, right?
STU: Oh, Juan, he is a great whopper. He is going to be fantastic.
GLENN: You hated Juan Hernandez. Juan Hernandez is the guy who says there should be one great state, Mex-Ameri-Canada. He says that Canada and Mexico and the United States should just all get together, once a Mexican, always a Mexican.
STU: This is ridiculous. You are talking about yesterday when I said that?
GLENN: What?
STU: You’re talking about yesterday when I said I didn’t like Juan Hernandez.
GLENN: Yes.
STU: This is today. John McCain won last night. Now I love him. I need you to get a little bit more pep in your voice when you are doing these breaks. These songs are way down key. They are low-key. People are excited today to vote for John McCain for President. (continue reading post »)

Poor Ted.

After Ted Kennedy endorsed Barak Obama, feminist Marcia Pappas (NOW) has excoriated him like a shrew whose husband has left for another man:

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger… And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment!

He’s picked the new (black) guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton…

Maybe Kennedy just supports the Democrat who he believes is least like Ms. Pappas.

But Americans should not fault Pappas for her tantrum. After all, isn’t her’s the logical argument for the champions of affirmative action and the abandonment of equal opportunity? While conservatives and independents now debate which candidate is most qualified to confront issues of national security, our economy, healthcare, illegal immigration and radical Islam, Democrats are still arguing whether dark skin is better than a vagina.

So much for the “party of change” - unless, of course, they’re referring to diapers.

Earlier today, Captain Ed announced that he’d caucus for Mitt Romney when Minnesota holds its caucuses on Super Duper Tuesday. Of the remaining candidates, I find myself agreeing most with Mitt. Something that Captain Ed said, though, raised some red flags for me. This is the part that caught my attention:

This decision did not come easily. Some have complained about the choices available to the Republicans, but I have seen the field as a collection of highly accomplished, experienced candidates, almost all of whom I could support, enthusiastically, in a general election. That made the decision as hard as it was, and it forced me to analyze what I want to see in a nominee.

Frankly, this isn’t a great bunch of candidates. John McCain is certainly strong on the Iraq war but he’s also the guy who would pick justices who would preserve his only legislative ‘achievement’, campaign finance reform. He’s also the man who thinks that manmade global warming is so important that he’s willing to co-sponsor a huge tax increase to reverse manmade global warming.

That’s before we start talking about his role in the McCain-Kennedy Grand Bargain amnesty bill. Sen. McCain says that he “got the message” on immigration reform, that he’ll shut down the borders first before giving all the illegal immigrants amnesty. As I wrote here, we got the message, too, when he hired Juan Hernandez as his “Hispanic Outreach Director.”

That isn’t the resume of a great candidate. The only way you get there is if you’re good at rationalizing and if you use the loosest of subjective criteria. (continue reading post »)

Now that he’s almost mathematically eliminated, stories are coming out about the Arkansas Disaster that Mike Huckabee presided over. This is one of those stories. To say that Huckabee didn’t rebuild the GOP is understatement. To say that he didn’t make friends is also understatement.

Jake Files was a newly elected representative when all two dozen Arkansas House Republicans met for their first caucus in 1999. They had doubled their numbers in elections two months earlier, and were ready to join Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee in pushing for conservative government.

That was when Brenda Turner, the governor’s chief of staff, entered.

“Just walked in, shut the door and said, ‘There’s two kinds of people in the world: those who are for Mike Huckabee and those who are against Mike Huckabee. I’ll do everything I can to help the first group. I’ll do everything I can to hurt the second,’” said Mr. Files, who left the legislature after two terms.

Last night, I said that the first word I thought of when Mike Huckabee’s name came up was socialist. I’ll still stand by that but I’ll add that the second word I’ll think of now is dictator. Tyrant also fits. Like his responses to Mitt asking him if he raised taxes, Huckabee’s response to these charges is similarly evasive: (continue reading post »)

The Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson has a must read column on why Fred Thompson’s campaign failed…and why it shouldn’t have failed. Here’s a delicious sample of Ferguson’s thinking:

The man or woman who seeks out such a life and enjoys its discomforts is not normal. Not crazy necessarily, but not normal, and probably, when the chips are down, not to be trusted, especially when the purpose of it all is to acquire power over other people (also called, in the delicate language of contemporary politics, “public service” or “getting things done on behalf of the American people”). The case is made, in defense of the contemporary campaign, that this is an efficient if unlovely way to choose leaders: It winnows out those who lack the stamina and discipline necessary to lead a rich, large, powerful, and complicated country. By this argument, Thompson failed because he deserved to.

But the opposite case is easier to make, that the modern campaign excludes anyone who lacks the narcissism, cold-bloodedness, and unreflective nature that the process requires and rewards. In his memoir, Greenspan remarks that of the seven presidents he has known well, the only one who was “close to normal” was Jerry Ford. And, as Greenspan points out, Ford was never elected.

Fred Thompson probably feels terrible at the moment, but he should be honored to be in Ford’s company.

Frankly, I was upset that Fred didn’t garner more votes than he did. I’m more upset with the way the media gave his campaign less attention than they’d give a leper. Most of all, I’m upset with right-of-center commentators who talked endlessly about the latest poll, the candidates’ cash on hand and other horserace-related topics while ignoring the candidates’ qualifications.

To this day, I’m still convinced that Fred Thompson was the most over-qualified presidential candidate since Reagan. To this day, I’m upset that conservatives, who say that the GOP has to be the party of ideas, ignored Fred like he was the Invisible Man. (continue reading post »)

The LA Times Jonathan Chait is getting tired of the Clintons’ scorched earth tactics. In fact, he thinks it’s time for them to exit stage left:

Something strange happened the other day. All these different people, friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read, kept saying the same thing: They’ve suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I think we’ve reached an irrevocable turning point in liberal opinion of the Clintons.

The sentiment seems to be concentrated among Barack Obama supporters. Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We’re not frothing Clinton haters like…well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they’d go away.

The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging that Ronald Reagan changed the country. Everyone knows Reagan changed the country. Bill and Hillary have said he changed the country. But they falsely claimed that Obama praised Reagan’s ideas, saying he was a better president than Clinton, something he didn’t say and surely does not believe.

It’s amazing that people on the left didn’t say anything about the Clintons when they directed their attacks at conservatives but now they’re frothing at the mouth now that they’re attacking a liberal. I won’t belabor the point that there is a double standard; that isn’t news. (continue reading post »)

After getting his ass handed to him on immigration reform the first time, John McCain started saying that he’d “gotten the message”. He still insists that his bill wasn’t amnesty, though, making conservatives wary of his immigration ‘transformation’. This information should remove all doubt:

A reader alerted me to the fact that McCain’s “Hispanic Outreach Director” is the same guy who held that job for Mexico’s President Vicente Fox! U.S.-born dual citizen Juan Hernandez was in Fox’s cabinet as Director of the Office for Mexicans Living Abroad and is notorious for having said of Mexican Americans on Nightline on June 7, 2001, “I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’” Does McCain agree with this? Has he offered Hernandez, a former high-level foreign government official who presumably swore an oath to uphold the Mexican constitution, a place in a future McCain Administration? That’s not a rhetorical question.

I’ve said many times that people didn’t trust McCain’s second attempt because La Raza (NCLR) had veto power over anything brought up. NCLR are open borders advocates. Add the hiring Juan Hernandez as his “Hispanic Outreach Director” to the NCLR debacle and you’ve got an immigration reform disgrace. It’s pretty apparent that John McCain hasn’t changed his views one iota. He’s still the same pro-amnesty guy he’s always been.

McCain’s actions tell us what his position is. His actions don’t agree with his words, which is a polite way of saying that McCain shouldn’t be trusted with immigration policy. He’s as stubborn and prideful as anyone I’ve ever seen in public life. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust him on immigration policy if my life depended on it. (continue reading post »)

Though I hate admitting it, it’s time to move on now that Fred’s dropped his presidential bid. Before we move on, though, I think it’s important to learn from Fred’s campaign.

The biggest lesson to be learned is that Fred shouldn’t have teased us so long with his entry. Fredheads should’ve contacted his campaign and told him he needed to get in so he could carve out his niche. Had the Fred Thompson of the last few debates jumped in in July or August, I’m convinced that he’d be the prohibitive favorite for the GOP’s presidential nomination right now.

The next biggest lesson we must learn as a political party is that Thompson’s type of conservatism is appealling. The other lesson we need to learn is that we don’t need to abandon conservatism to attract more squishy moderates. I’m all for a big tent but I insist that it’s a principled big tent. Which leads to this important point.

John McCain’s way of collaborating with Democrats is the opposite approach that Reagan used in winning over liberals. Reagan won liberals over with policies that made too much sense to argue against. McCain hasn’t tried winning liberals over. History will show that McCain caved each time he worked with Democrats. The only time he didn’t cave was on the surge.

McCain caved on the Gang of 14 without a legitimate reason. McCain caved on the First Amendment when he teamed up with Russ Feingold, Christopher Shays and Marty Meehan on campaign finance ‘reform’. He caved to Ted Kennedy on immigration ‘reform’, even allowing an open borders advocacy group like NCLR a seat at the negotiating table for the second bill.

Because NCLR was doing the negotiating, we knew that McCain wasn’t talking straight with us when he said that he’d learned his lesson about comprehensive immigration reform. Everyone knew that he and Ted Kennedy simply repackaged the same teethless provisions into a new bill. (continue reading post »)

I’ve been meaning to write about what Reaganite conservatism is and isn’t since this summer. In the aftermath of Fred Thompson’s dropping, now’s the time to write it.

Alot of people think that Reaganite conservatism is about cutting taxes, a strong defense and appointing strict constructionist judges. That’s a mistake, not because Reagan didn’t espouse these things but because Reaganite conservatism was much more than that.

At its core, Reaganite conservatism was about liberty. Every economic and foreign policy had liberty as its goal. The byproducts of that liberty were economic prosperity and the collapse of the Soviet Union. To achieve these goals, Reagan understood that he had to stand conventional wisdom on its head. Reagan knew that conventional wisdom wasn’t based on the Constitution’s first principles but on the latest Beltway buzz. Instinctively, Reagan knew that anything born inside Washington’s Beltway was foolishness compared with the common sense found in America’s heartland.

At the heart of Reaganite conservatism was Reagan’s passionate belief that everyone cherished liberty deep in the core of their being. (That’s something that George W. Bush understood, which is why liberating Iraq and Afghanistan was the centerpiece of his foreign policy.) That understanding shined through when he told Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall” even after his speechwriters tried deleting it from the speech several times. He knew that that message needed to be told to stoke the fires of long-suffering Soviet dissidents.

Decades later, one of the dissidents that was re-invigorate by Reagan’s call to tear down the Berlin Wall passed that along to George W. Bush. His name is Natan Sharansky. President Bush read Sharansky’s book, then gave it to his national security team as their reading assignment. (continue reading post »)

I’m old enough that I remember Martin Luther King. I read about him in the newspapers. I saw him on television. I heard his “Dream” speech. I wept when he was murdered.

I have no patience for those who claim that America is just as racist as it was in years gone by. I remember those days. I remember federal troops in Little Rock. I remember Gov. George Wallace blocking the school door. I remember Sheriff “Bull” Conner and the fire hoses being turned on marchers in Birmingham. I remember the Freedom Riders. I remember separate drinking fountains and “white only” signs. I remember the fear. I remember the hate.

But mostly, I remember the sound of a Georgia preacher’s voice calling out. I remember him calling out, not just to his followers, but to his enemies as well. He told us that we were better men and women and that hate and fear shouldn’t divide us. He reminded is that we were all one people, regardless of skin color or religion.

That voice was heard. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land with the support of more than 80% of the Republicans in Congress and slightly more than 60% of the Democrats (among those opposing the measure were Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Al Gore’s late father who was a senator from Tennessee).

Those were heady days. Then the dream started to sour. Government programs aimed at aiding African Americans ended up causing mortal harm. The welfare structure effectively destroyed the black family structure. Other program, such as affirmative action, conveyed the message to both African Americans and others that blacks were incapable of competing. Some claimed it was needed to fight vestiges of racism against minorities, while completely ignoring the success of Asian Americans, some of whom in modern times faced incarceration solely based on their ethnicity.

Whatever the intent, the effect was to make African Americans dependent upon government largess and intervention rather than encouraging their own genius. (continue reading post »)