Bound by a common desire to deny President Obama a second term,restive activists gathering Thursday for the 39th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington find themselves lacking a clear champion in the suddenly scrambled Republican race to choose an alternative.
CPAC attendees — expected to number more than 6,000 from across the country — pride themselves on maintaining varying degrees of independence from the GOP. The three-day gathering kicks off two days after primaries and caucuses in Colorado,Minnesota and Missouri raised doubts once again among conservative voters about presumed GOP front-runner Mitt Romney.
Rick Santorum,a social conservative and the big winner in Tuesday’s vote,“has energized his supporters and the family-issue conservatives coming to CPAC,” said Floyd Brown,president of the Western Center for Journalism,a conservative watchdog group,who works with conservative and tea party activists across the country.
“His victories may be a surprise to the GOP elite in Washington,D.C.,but conservatives and tea party activists outside the Beltway are not ready to accept the designated Beltway choice,Mitt Romney,” Mr. Brown said.
Added Donald J. Devine,a conservative author and former Reagan administration official,“The mood of conservatives is disappointment that their candidates for president are so weak. They are probably confident they’ll win the White House even with these candidates,although I am not confident.
(CNSNews.com) – Following his clean sweep in Tuesday’s nominating contests in Colorado,Minnesota and Missouri on Tuesday,Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum sent his supporters a letter,making the case that he is the true conservative in the race.
“Before I try and get some sleep,I had to sit down and write you this letter,” Santorum wrote. The letter,which included a request for donations,was emailed around 2:30 a.m.
Santorum mentioned Ronald Reagan,who lost eight primaries in the 1976 presidential bid but made it all the way to the nominating convention. It took Reagan a few more years to become the Republican presidential nominee,but Santorum is hoping for a different outcome.
“I can beat Mitt Romney and then President Obama with the kind of conservative ideas that you support,” Santorum said.
“Conservatives face a choice now,” Santorum wrote. “It’s a ‘time for choosing’ for us. Will we choose another Gerald Ford,Bob Dole,or John McCain? Or will we choose a Conservative standard bearer to inspire our party and America along with it?”
The news media yesterday was rife with reports accusing Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces of killed at least 67 civilians in the rebel stronghold of Homs.
The reports were the latest claims charging Assad’s soldiers and militiamen engaged in whole scale atrocities against unarmed civilians.
The vast majority of reports rely on claims by local,unnamed activists.
Many English-language news reports of recent events in Syria reviewed by KleinOnline fail to quote the Syrian side,which claims armed terrorists,including Islamists,provoked Syrian forces and drew fire into civilian zones.
Syria also says the terrorists are behind the killing of civilians.
Gallup Polling is caught between what its thousands of interviews say about Barack Obama’s reelection chances and what it longs for the facts to be.
They do their best to hide the truth with suspiciously timed releases and obfuscating language. Nevertheless,embedded in its latest report on voter attitudes,Gallup’s delivers more bad news for Obama. Try as it did to put a happy face on the dangerously low level of “satisfaction” in the electorate, Gallup can’t do much with a 22% rate. Bill Clinton,George W Bush and Ronald Reagan all had more than 41% rates on their way to reelection,but George H.W. Bush was at 22% in 1992 when he lost to Clinton.
Voters’ sentiment on the economy shows more weakness for Obama with 56% saying it is getting worse while just 38% see it getting better. This -25 in Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index compares too favorably to Bush senior’s -31 during June of 1992 to provide any real encouragement for Obama.
Gallup’s attempt to talk up the improvement in the unemployment rate as reported last week (8.3%) runs into a serious problem since for the least two years Gallup has been saying the real rate (8.6%) is higher than being reported. When the underemployed numbers (18.7%) are included things get still worse for Obama.
The current 71% of Americans with economic matters on their minds is reminiscent of Bush senior’s ill-fated reelection campaign 20 years ago.
Rasmussen’s numbers
The Rasmussen Report shows us the sour attitudes of “uncommitted” voters which carries a subsurface problem not being focused on by many analysts. The sample is small (only 12%) but the trend is clear:just 20% of these likely voters approve of Obama’s job performance.
This 12% “uncommitted” could mean 88% of voters have already made a decision. With the enthusiasm rates among Democrats as low as they are a recovery by Obama looks less likely by the month.
Note: neither of these reports was completed before the showdown with the Catholic Church over the issue of forcing faith based institutions to offer abortion services as part of their employee health insurance plans.
If Obama is on track for reelection,there is little evidence to support it.
Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe and his colleagues at Project Veritas have done it again. Their new bombshell video shows election workers in New Hampshire giving out ballots in the names of dead voters at multiple voting precincts during the state’s recent primary election. Although James and his colleagues repeatedly asked if they needed to show their ID,they were told by every single poll worker that that was not necessary. Some said that they were expressly forbidden from asking for ID. In fact,one worker had the audacity to say “Live free or die. This is New Hampshire,no ID required.”Watch the video below.
Here’s the background of what has been going on:Conservatives in the New Hampshire legislature passed a voter ID bill to prevent this kind of abuse,but Democratic Governor John Lynch vetoed the bill. Lynch claimed that there was no evidence that voting fraud could or was being perpetrated in New Hampshire;however,O’Keefe and his intrepid band of investigators have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that that statement is simply false.
Now generally,fewer laws are better than more laws. However,in this case,the one passed by New Hampshire is necessary to protect our sacred right to vote.
If you buy alcohol or cigarettes,you might have to show ID. If you want to cash a check at a bank,you will have to show ID. If you want to see an R-rated movie,you might have to show ID. Most times when I need to show ID,I do not mind doing so because I have nothing to hide. This is not an invasion of my privacy by any stretch of the imagination. It really should not be an issue especially when you are voting in an election.
The left makes absolutely no sense when arguing against the need for Voter ID laws. All they can do is,without a shred of evidence,say that these laws somehow discriminate against “minorities”. The truth is,these laws only discriminate against criminal fraud.
Naturally,anytime you show establishment failure,someone has to pay. Encouraged by liberal groups such as the website Daily Kos, New Hampshire’s Democrat Governor and Attorney General are now exploring ways to come after James O’Keefe and Project Veritas,rather than switch gears to support the Republican voter ID law. All because these “troublemakers”exposed a corrupt,inherently flawed system.
There was a time when the Republican Party had a ballot security program and put a lot of effort into purging voter lists of dead,moved,and inactive voters. Today,those efforts are all too often cast aside in the name of political correctness,and it is left to trust that machine politicians won’t commit outright fraud in order to win by allowing dead people and others who are not eligible to cast a ballot to vote anyway.
Liberals want to taint any discussion of ballot security with charges of racism and minority voter suppression. Nevertheless,what James and Project Veritas did was to show conclusively that what liberals are really doing is perpetuating an election system that invites fraud.
James O’Keefe and his team of young grassroots conservatives used new technology and chutzpa to show that the need for ballot security is as strong as ever and that the Chicago-way of winning elections is alive and well.
They are filling an important void in the ballot security process by showing that where voter ID requirements are lax,dead people can indeed vote. Conservatives should be ready to defend O’Keefe against the inevitable liberal backlash and the legal harassment that is sure to come with it.
Those trying to re-elect President Obama,such as the convicted vote fraudsters from the old ACORN organization and those of Obama’s national campaign operatives who were trained by the notorious Chicago political machine,won’t hesitate to use vote fraud to win this election. James and Project Veritas have done,and are doing,something about it – the liberal media is doing its best to spike this story;conservatives must now shine a spotlight on their efforts.
I urge you to take a minute to consider how important ballot security is in the 2012 election and how fragile are our voting protections.
It is important to keep in mind that at the end of the day,this is not about right vs. left;it is about right vs. wrong.
If you happen to live in New Hampshire,please contact your state representatives and demand that they attempt to pass this voter ID law again. The legislature has no excuse,as the Republicans have a veto-proof majority;they could go over the Democratic governor’s head anytime if they wanted,as they have in the past. If you know anyone who lives in New Hampshire,have them lobby their legislators.
All Americans should do some research to determine if their state has a similar voter ID law in place. If not,they should demand that their respective legislature puts one on the books as soon as possible. If it can happen in New Hampshire,it can happen anywhere in the US. The future of our country is at stake.
Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at CatholicVote.org.
February 6 was the anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. It comes at an appropriate time. February is also the month of Presidents Day and the birthday of Lincoln,the other Republican standard-bearer. Every Republican presidential candidate tries to claim the mantle of Reagan:“I believe as Ronald Reagan believed….”
Well,what did Ronald Reagan believe? It’s a question I get often. I’ve been giving a lecture titled,“What is a Reagan conservative?” I’ll be giving it again at the CPAC conference on Feb. 11 and ourCenter for Vision &Values conference in April. In that lecture,I lay out the core fundamentals of “Reagan conservatism.”
Some of those fundamentals have special relevance in light of the ongoing scandal known as the “Obama mandate;” that is,President Obama’s unprecedented “healthcare” decree mandating that all Americans—including Catholics and Catholic organizations—forcibly pay for contraception,sterilization,and birth-control drugs that cause abortions. Two core Reagan fundamentals stand out:1) Reagan’s belief in the sanctity and dignity of human life;and 2) Reagan’s thoughts on the “idea” of America.
On the first,Reagan insisted that without the right to life,there can be no other rights. The right to life is the first of all freedoms,without which other freedoms literally cannot exist. “My administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land,” said Reagan in 1983. “And there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings,the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”
For Reagan,that right to life began in the womb. It began at conception. As president, Reagan supported a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,which would have inserted into the Constitution these words:“the paramount right to life is vested in each human being from the moment of fertilization without regard to age,health or condition of dependency.” He favored providing every human being—at all stages of development—protection as “persons” with the “right to life” under the 14th Amendment.
That amendment never passed. Too bad. It would have killed Obama’s mandate,or at least posed a significant challenge.
In addition,Reagan extolled America as a country based on timeless,eternal values:on universal,God-given inalienable rights. Reagan gave innumerable statements on these rights,but I’m struck by one he gave way back in June 1952 at tiny William Woods College in Missouri.
There,Reagan said that America is “less of a place than an idea,” a place that resided deep in our souls. “It is simply the idea,” said Reagan,“the basis of this country and of our religion,the idea of the dignity of man,the idea that deep within the heart of each one of us is something so God-like and precious that no individual or group has a right to impose his or its will upon the people so well as they can decide for themselves.”
Well,the Obama mandate imposes President Obama’s personal will upon all of the American people,and especially Catholics whose consciences dictate otherwise. The mandate violates something God-like and deep within the heart of religious believers who profess the dignity of man from the moment of conception—whose faith implores them not to violate that dignity. President Obama,via his fiat,has instructed certain believers not only to go against their conscience and Church’s teachings but to subsidize the transgression.
In another speech years later,in August 1983,Reagan referred to Americans’ inalienable rights as “corollaries of the great proposition,at the heart of Western civilization,that every … person is aressacra,a sacred reality,and as such is entitled to the opportunity of fulfilling those great human potentials with which God has endowed man.”
For many Americans,their faith calls upon them to defend those persons,each one of which is a sacred reality that must be permitted to achieve the great human potential that is God’s hope for all of us.
This is what Ronald Reagan believed. The current president’s “healthcare” mandate is a flagrant rejection of these principles.
Obama and his team are hypocrites. They claim to want clean elections and that Super PAC’s are the spawn of the rich evil elites that want to rule America. That must be why they are starting one. Obama has only one goal,the accumulation of power. He truly practices the ends justify the means.
The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama,with 67 million now relying on some federal program,according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.
The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing,health,welfare,education subsidies and other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.”
The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president,the data show.
The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies,an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system,along with a sharp rise in food stamps,the study found.
“You can’t get around the fact that policy decisions made over the past two years,on top of those made over the past several decades,are having a large effect on the pace of growth of the index,”said William Beach,who authored the Heritage study.
In March of 2011,former Rep. John Leboutiller predicted in a News Max article that,“the tea party will select the 2012 GOP nominee.”
At the time,it was a safe prediction given the strength of the tea-party movement in the 2010 elections and the influence it was expected to have on the GOP presidential primaries just over a year later. But something went terribly wrong in the meantime. Many politicians heavily supported by the tea-party movement seem to have switched sides,pursuing their own agenda at the expense of the conservative movement and the tea party.
Take Christine O’Donnell,for example. O’Donnell lost her bid for the U.S. Senate in Delaware but continues to have a following among tea-party activists. Inexplicably,she recently endorsed Romney,stating she is doing so because she thinks “infrastructure and executive experience are important.” She also claimed,“He’s been consistent since he changed his mind.”
One wonders if the $5,000 O’Donnell received in 2010 from Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC had any influence on her decision.
Similarly,the tea-party movement was heavily involved in the election of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley,but she endorsed Romney last month,claiming in her endorsement remarks,“He knows how to create jobs and turn the economy.” Haley also received some big bucks from Romney;to be precise,she took $36,000 from Romney’s various PACs over the last few years,more than any other gubernatorial candidate.
Then there’s Rep. Jason Chaffetz,R-Utah,a long-time favorite of tea-party activists. Chaffetz is actually a member of the Romney “Truth Squad” that goes around harassing Newt Gingrich everywhere he speaks. Chaffetz claims Romney is a fiscal conservative and that due to his budget cuts in Massachusetts,tea partiers “love” him. But Chaffetz also loves Romney’s money since he received almost $7,000 from Romney’s PAC since 2008.
Lastly,Romney seems to have even compromised the tea-party hero of Florida,Sen. Marco Rubio. Like others,Rubio professes neutrality in the GOP primary but finds frequent opportunities to proclaim,“Romney is a conservative.” And,by the way,Rubio has accepted over $7,000 from Romney’s PAC.
What’s astonishing about these tea party-supported politicians is the level of apparent ignorance they all exhibit regarding Romney’s record. Clues evidencing Romney’s RINO ways abound;just take a look at his consultants,advisers and donors. He’s Bob Dole and John McCain all over again. Moreover,Romney doesn’t seem to have any core convictions. Indeed,contrary to O’Donnell’s remarks,Romney hasn’t been consistent about anything other than promoting himself. At last count,he’s flipped-flopped on over 30 major issues.
With respect to his economic record,Chaffetz and Haley seem clueless as to the real facts:Romney’s was one of the worst in the country. He certainly didn’t govern as a fiscal conservative. Indeed,according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,Romney’s job-creation record was 49th in the country. Why? Tax hikes on corporations and other private sector burdens resulting from his cap-and-trade and Romneycare policies.
As for abortion,some tea-party backers appear to be parroting Romney press releases. Do they not know that Romney – since his alleged pro-life “conversion” in 2004 – has engaged in numerous pro-abortion actions? For example,the Romney administration gave millions of tax dollars to Planned Parenthood for the construction of an abortion clinic and dramatically expanded state funding of abortion by ensuring that it was covered by his Romneycare plan.
Indeed,Romney led the nation in advancing three of the left’s primary policy goals:gay marriage,cap-and-trade and government control of heath care. And now he may be the GOP nominee? This is pathetic. These politicians had the power and influence to unite conservatives all over the country behind a conservative candidate,but instead they took part in misleading voters about the real Romney record.
The tea-party movement should be outraged and should hold these politicians accountable for this betrayal. Romney typifies everything that’s wrong with the GOP and possesses the same type of RINO worldview that led to the rise of the tea-party movement. To these politicians,power and influence are more important than the future of America. If the Republican Party nominates Mitt Romney,who then loses to Obama,it will be due partly to a total lack of leadership by many of the same “conservative” politicians the tea-party movement helped elect.
Steve Baldwin is a former member of the California Legislature and former executive director of the Council for National Policy. He is the author of “From Crayons to Condoms,” published by WND Books.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh blithely calls the mainstream media “state-controlled,” as if the White House Press Corps,AP,UPI,ABC,CBS,NBC,CNN,etc. were some giant Soviet Politburo directed by Obama.
Of course we all experienced the slanted coverage in the 90s of the Bill Clinton fiasco,with accusations from women across the country rising like a whack-the-mole game. Sadly,these women,from Gennifer Flowers to Paula Jones to Kathleen Willey,were to be suppressed and referred to as whores by the mainstream media. Then Monica Lewinsky came forward,stating that Clinton had committed some rather inappropriate acts in the Oval Office. Hillary Clinton’s charge of a “vast right wing conspiracy” directed at her husband was vociferously echoed by the mainstream media. Of course,we later found out it was all true,down to the cigar and blue dress. But this does not rise to a state-controlled mainstream media,does it?
In 2008,when McCain was running on the Republican ticket for President,there was this strange,bubbling question of his eligibility due to the fact that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Various mainstream media sources questioned McCain’s natural-born status,blatantly ignoring Obama’s more pressing question of natural-born status,his father being a Kenyan and a subject of the United Kingdom,and Obama being listed as an Indonesian citizen in school records. But this does not rise to a state-controlled mainstream media,does it?
As the “birthers” were swooping down upon McCain,a mainstream media smear job began against Sarah Palin. Although she had been a hockey mom, no one had discovered how STUPID she was,so they said. When she was a mayor and brought the city of Wasilla to grow by leaps and bounds, when she ran the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission and got the political crooks out of the game, and when she was Governor of Alaska with an approval rating of ninety percent,strangely,the hundreds of thousands of people who had voted for and supported her were just not aware of her stupidity (so they said). Of course,the mainstream media’s portrayal of Sarah Palin was and is a lie,this being our first taste of what we would learn to be a smear job. But this does not support the charge of a state-controlled mainstream media,does it?
When Herman Cain was rising exponentially in the GOP polls,the mainstream media had first charged that he was stupid like Sarah Palin. They charged him to be a sell-out to African-Americans,a “minstrel.” They called him a racist. Yet all this time,his poll numbers continues to rise. Then they pulled out the big guns,whereby a series of “stories” surfaced:anonymous women with vague charges of sexual harassment. Politico ran almost one hundred stories about these allegations in a single week,subsequently having little to say about more substantiated subjects such as Fast and Furious,Solynda,or the other endless corruptions within the Obama administration. But,oddly,his numbers continued to rise. The mainstream media then pulled out all the stops,relentlessly splashing the faces and stories of Sharon Bialek and Ginger White across every website,every TV screen,and every radio outlet. Mission accomplished;Cain dropped out of the race. Of course the accusers strangely and suddenly disappeared also. But this does not support the charge of a state-controlled mainstream media,does it?
By this time,we had all come to the conclusion that the facade of an objective mainstream media had been dropped. We could still rely on Fox News to a certain extent. We could rely on Drudge Report, National Review,and all the other conservative outlets. But enter Newt Gingrich. The Republican establishment made no bones about Romney being their man,but we never expected conservative media outlets to take on the Alinsky attack mode of the mainstream media. Almost in unison, Drudge Report and National Review attacked Gingrich regarding his statements of his relationship with and support of Ronald Reagan. After the initial Drudge Report and National Review assault,it quickly seethed on much of conservative media,subsequently being parroted by the mainstream media. This shocked most conservatives that,like the mainstream media’s tactics,there had been a relentless orchestrated attack against Newt Gingrich—a political version of what had been heaped upon Herman Cain. But even this does not support the charge of a state-controlled mainstream media,does it?
But when five hundred thousand people gathered for the pro-life March for Life rally in D.C. January 23,there was little if any coverage from the mainstream media. In fact,they covered the dozen or so pro-choice protesters. Therefore,we must come to the conclusion that Rush Limbaugh is right: We have a state-controlled mainstream media.
So,when the state-controlled media’s smear job of Newt Gingrich comes to fruition,then they can move on to the next target:Rick Santorum.
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Is Obama Really In Good Shape For Re-election? Or Is The Media Lying Again?
Gallup Polling is caught between what its thousands of interviews say about Barack Obama’s reelection chances and what it longs for the facts to be.
They do their best to hide the truth with suspiciously timed releases and obfuscating language. Nevertheless,embedded in its latest report on voter attitudes,Gallup’s delivers more bad news for Obama. Try as it did to put a happy face on the dangerously low level of “satisfaction” in the electorate, Gallup can’t do much with a 22% rate. Bill Clinton,George W Bush and Ronald Reagan all had more than 41% rates on their way to reelection,but George H.W. Bush was at 22% in 1992 when he lost to Clinton.
Voters’ sentiment on the economy shows more weakness for Obama with 56% saying it is getting worse while just 38% see it getting better. This -25 in Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index compares too favorably to Bush senior’s -31 during June of 1992 to provide any real encouragement for Obama.
Gallup’s attempt to talk up the improvement in the unemployment rate as reported last week (8.3%) runs into a serious problem since for the least two years Gallup has been saying the real rate (8.6%) is higher than being reported. When the underemployed numbers (18.7%) are included things get still worse for Obama.
The current 71% of Americans with economic matters on their minds is reminiscent of Bush senior’s ill-fated reelection campaign 20 years ago.
Rasmussen’s numbers
The Rasmussen Report shows us the sour attitudes of “uncommitted” voters which carries a subsurface problem not being focused on by many analysts. The sample is small (only 12%) but the trend is clear:just 20% of these likely voters approve of Obama’s job performance.
This 12% “uncommitted” could mean 88% of voters have already made a decision. With the enthusiasm rates among Democrats as low as they are a recovery by Obama looks less likely by the month.
Note: neither of these reports was completed before the showdown with the Catholic Church over the issue of forcing faith based institutions to offer abortion services as part of their employee health insurance plans.
If Obama is on track for reelection,there is little evidence to support it.
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