Recent Commentary

As the old saying goes, "when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade".

Herewith, a list of some of the lemons from the recent election and the lemonade they could offer.

Election return lemons: the race is over.  Obama won.  The liberals have two out of three branches of government...with the third (the judiciary) hanging in the balance.  Those are pretty big lemons.

Lemonade: conservatives have an opportunity to re-focus our message on our principles and define ourselves in stark relief to the inevitable liberal overreach...and then be positioned to catch those folks in the middle who will soon come down with a case of buyer's remorse.

Strategy lemons: McCain's strategy of "reaching out" failed, (reliable red states turning blue?).  Lemonade: "reach-across-the-aisleism" as a strategy is now thoroughly discredited.  Good riddance. 

Knowledge, as they say, is power. Well, if you still lack enough information to decide which of the candidates for President will do the most damage to your values, prepare to be empowered.

Consider the following…

Unbridled liberalism: With Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in charge of the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, Americans will be riding in the equivalent of a car with three gas pedals and no brake. Not a recipe for a safe ride. The only way to stop is to get into a crash.

So what’s all the fuss about ACORN, and why should it matter to anyone?  Well, if you’re an American citizen, and you take citizenship seriously, it matters because our electoral process is being compromised.

As recent press reports have shown, ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has been hard at work registering voters in all of the key battleground states for the upcoming election.  And, as many of these same reports attest, they’re busy being investigated for possible voter fraud.

Let's get one thing straight.  The government and its misguided housing policies caused our current financial mess.  And, as a result, the government should help fix it.

That said, exactly "what" should have been fixed, "how" and for "how much" are the right places to focus our attention.  But that doesn't mean we shouldn't make sure everyone knows exactly how we got in this mess. 

The origins lie in the Clinton Administration's misguided attempt to raise the percentage of homeowners in America by forcing banks to give loans to people with, shall we say, less than stellar credit, (those "sub-prime" mortgages you keep hearing about).

The game has changed.  In an election of McCain vs. Obama, the race was all about Obama.  Not anymore.

Win or lose, picking Sarah Palin will go down as the greatest single thing McCain has done for his own campaign, as well as for the conservative movement.  Conservatives are rallying like never before to her presence on the ticket.

She’s a fiscal conservative who favors tax cuts and has actually used a veto pen.  She’s a born-again Christian, pro-life, pro-family, pro-gun…she hunts, she fishes, baits her own hook, has five kids and doesn’t look like a member of the NOW gang.  What’s not to like?  Indeed, that, plus a record of conservative reform and demonstrated political skills on the stump and I’d say we’ve got ourselves a star.  And at age 44, one with a potentially long future at that.

Barack Obama's on the make for evangelicals - specifically the conservative, registered-to-vote variety.  The same type of voters he previously referred to as being "bitter" and who "cling to guns or religion".

A few weeks ago he told such voters that, if elected, he would expand and overhaul President Bush's federal faith based initiatives, announcing his own "Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships".  He has begun regular attempts to appeal to evangelicals, speaking to them on multiple occasions in recent weeks as part of what his campaign terms its "Joshua project".

Of course this is all well and good.  Candidates who expect the votes of any Americans should make an attempt to address their concerns.  The reality however is more blatantly political in that, on the fundamental cultural and moral concerns of evangelicals, he has very little in common with them at all.

So what do liberals talk about when they get together and think no one else is listening?  They talk about the rest of us, of course.  Specifically, trying to explain why most people aren't receptive to their ideas. 

The latest example comes from Democrat front-runner Barack Obama at a recent San Francisco fundraiser, where he was caught on tape remarking (or psycho-analyzing) that many voters in the middle class tend to "cling" to God and guns whenever they're bitter about their life. 

Obama stated, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations".

Quick history quiz.  Who said the following: “This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 to 1.3 million illegal aliens.  We will secure the borders henceforth.  We will never again bring forward another amnesty bill like this.”?  That was Ted Kennedy on the floor of the US Senate in 1986, pushing for legislation that successfully granted amnesty to several million illegal aliens that year.

There you have a good example of why the word “amnesty” is such a hot-button with politicians and the American public.  Because the only thing that bill did successfully was grant amnesty.

Ted Kennedy’s promises of “securing the border” notwithstanding, we’ve since had another twelve to twenty million illegals sneak into our country.  So here comes the amnesty crowd once again, claiming that without it our country will suffer plagues of uncut grass and unpicked cabbage.

It ain’t easy being Hillary.  As far as the general public is concerned, she’s the single most divisive major political figure in the Democrat party; while the various liberal constituencies that constitute the Democrat’s party base worry that she’s not liberal enough.  Some who consider her too far to the right on the war issue even took to heckling her at a recent speech to the Democrat National Committee.

Poor Hillary.  It’s not as though she’s brought any of these problems on herself.  First, there was her clumsy entrance onto the national political stage in 1992 with that famous reference to “not staying home and baking cookies” or “standing by her man like Tammy Wynette” in vague reference to Bubba’s past indiscretions.