As Obama basks in the warm fuzzy glow of positive recent jobs numbers, all the while avoiding the pesky shadow of the soaring national debt, which now has so many zeros I can’t even input it on my calculator. And the negative campaigning for the GOP race has become as messy as a molting Wookie; it’s very easy to become discouraged.

Put down the Ben & Jerry’s, it’s not over. As a matter of fact, it’s only just begun.

With the inundation of negativity abounding for conservatives over our depressing whimpers of lament, here are three reasons you should not give up hope for a big change in November of 2012.

1. “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

It’s very easy to become convinced through main stream media that all hope should be abandoned.  However, you can always seek out evidence proving otherwise.

Rasmussen Reports produces Daily Presidential Tracking Polls.  Admittedly, this is similar to weighing yourself every day.  Certain circumstances on a day-to-day basis, like a late night left over pizza binge, can affect the numbers greatly.  As of Friday February 3^rd, current GOP front runner Mitt Romney was polling neck in neck with the President at 45% in a potential election match-up.  This is the first time Romney has polled this high against Obama since late in December.  The numbers are issued daily and you can have them delivered directly to your inbox each morning. Defeating an incumbent is never easy, but these numbers show it’s possible.

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Mitt Romney’s father, liberal Republican George Romney, met with and endorsed infamous progressive activist Saul Alinsky; meanwhile, in a defense of Mitt Romney against charges of racism, the National Black Chamber of Commerce points out the significant influence the elder Romney had on son Mitt and credits the Romneys for a long history of progressive activism. Emphasis mine.

No, Mitt Romney is not a racist. As I researched history, over the years I have come to find that the opposite is the case. The Romney Family has a legacy of pro-civil rights, progressive activism and an understanding of how poverty and inequality can hurt people.

This portrait would jibe with Mitt Romney’s image as a progressive Governor of Massachusetts, while suggesting any serious conversion to conservatism would not only entail a change in viewpoint but a rejection of Mitt’s Father, George — someone he has regularly mentioned as a major influence while campaigning. Taken as a whole, the new information could serve to fuel existing significant doubt amongst an already skeptical conservative base that Romney’s already vague conversion to conservatism is more one of electoral convenience than a principled decision.

During all of this advocacy, his son, Mitt, was evolving as a man. He idolized his father and emulated his legacy. Mitt Romney lived amongst Blacks in metropolitan Detroit. He went to the prestigious Cranbrook School. One of our board members, Claude McDougal, is a fellow alumnus of the school.

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Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina primary. And just hours before ABC aired its interview with Newt’s ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show. Gov. Palin predicted that the tabloid-style interview would only cause Speaker Gingrich’s ratings to soar.

Mocking the mainstream media, Gov. Palin said, “I call them dumbarses.”

Gov. Palin continued:

They, thinking that by trotting out this old Gingrich divorce interview that’s old news — and it does feature a disgruntled ex, claiming that it would destroy his campaign — all this does, Sean, is incentivize conservatives and independents who are so sick of the politics of personal destruction, because it’s played so selectively by the media, that their target, in this case Newt, he’s now going to soar even more. Because we know the game now, and we just won’t put up with it. Good call, media.

Good call, Sarah Palin. Debate after debate, it has been Newt Gingrich who has hammered the MSM on its preferential treatment of Barack Obama and his liberal agenda. And many conservatives across America are eating it up.

Starved for passionate expression of how the political and social dictates of the Obama “regime,” and its closely allied Media, have attempted to oppress and ridicule American voters with conservative leanings, Newt has let everyone know that the battle is on. He has articulated conservative ideas like no other candidate, though the other candidates may embrace those ideas themselves.

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According to The Hill, in a CBS This Morning interview, New Hampshire Republican primary winner Mitt Romney, said that his work to increase profits for his investment firm, Bain Capital, “was no different from the Obama administration’s auto industry bailouts.” Mr. Romney said:

In the general election I’ll be pointing out that the president took the reins at General Motors and Chrysler – closed factories, closed dealerships laid off thousands and thousands of workers – he did it to try to save the business.

Mr. Romney’s comments came in response to criticism by fellow Republican candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, that, during his tenure at Bain, he engaged in “looting” start-up companies and “vulture capitalism.”

During his daily show on Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh urged his listeners who were driving to “pull over” as he played the audio of Mitt Romney’s response. Gov. Romney’s reply to the criticisms are just as unbelievable as the criticisms themselves. Aren’t true conservatives against the government auto industry bailouts and TARP, for that matter? Why draw that comparison, and no sharp contrast, instead, to the president’s socialistic policies? Oh…I forgot…Mitt Romney doesn’t believe the president is a socialist.

Is Mitt Romney’s point, “You did it, too, Mr. President, so you can’t criticize me?” Worse, does Mr. Romney believe that the president did, in fact, “save” the auto industry?

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If you allow the media to tell the story about Mitt Romney’s comment, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me” you can easily be mislead that Romney is a emotionless, suit and tie wearing, profit hoarding CEO. On second thought, that last part may be entirely true. Aside from that, what’s even truer, and totally acceptable, is Romney’s attitude.

Yes, it is perfectly OK to fire someone if you are not satisfied with their performance or service, especially if you are the one forking over the dough. That is what makes a free market, capitalist system run in high gear. It feeds competition and pushes service providers to deliver the very best quality. Accountability is an important reason why free societies produce more than controlled societies. Moreover, it’s why many trust the private sector over government. This was precisely what Romney was referring to. Anyone who pays for a service ought to have the ability and right to terminate any agreement with a service provider if certain expectations are not met.

Answering a question about health care Monday morning, Mr. Romney said he would allow individuals to have their own insurance because it would provide the insurance company with an incentive to keep its clients healthy.“It also means that if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them,” Mr. Romney said. “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

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The United States is at a fork in the road regarding which way we will go as a people. The 2012 election could be the most important in our lifetime, and conservative leaders have reached a consensus on how to channel the energy and concerns of the American people to realize historic change this year.

The status quo will not survive the year. Our debt and spending have reached catastrophic proportions in the context of global financial difficulties and political upheaval. Consequently, by the end of 2012, America will either have taken a decisive step toward socialistic collectivism in the name of “equality” and “social justice,” where businesses and owners are punitively taxed to “pay their fair share,” or America will take a major step in the direction of returning to our Founders’ constitutional government, restoring the rule of law, federalism, free enterprise, and individual initiative and responsibility.

The American people will decide which path to take in the 2012 elections, not only in the general election on November 6 but also in the nominating process in primaries over the next several months for all major offices, including the presidency. Conservatives must act in a concerted and informed fashion in all of these contests to shape the public dialogue and thoroughly vet the candidates.

To achieve these ends, top conservative leaders acting under the umbrella of the Conservative Action Project have released “A Conservative Consensus for 2012” announcing agreement on major policies. These issues span all three wings of the conservative movement: economic, social, and national security.

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Liberal pundits are panicking over constitutional conservatism. They shouldn’t, because every child—whether the parents are liberal or conservative—will benefit from constitutional conservatism’s ascendency. If America elects a constitutional conservative president and Congress in 2012, we’ll move forward as a freedom-loving nation.

Several outlets on the Left—such as The New Republic—are raising an alarm about this disturbing new term, saying that it’s secret code for “absolutists” and “zealots” on economic issues, overturning Roe v. Wade, and implying that constitutional conservatives are segregationists bent on creating a theocracy.

As two constitutional conservatives who wrote a new book on the issue, Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America, we’ll correct the record on defining constitutional conservatism, how it now dominates Republican politics, and why America needs it so desperately.

Constitutional conservatism is the system of government the Founders gave to this country. They set out a series of principles on the rights of man and the role of government in the Declaration of Independence, including that God creates us equal and gives us rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit (not guarantee) of happiness, that government exists to secure these rights, and that the people either consent to this government or have the right to change it.

After years of trial and error, the country then adopted the Framers’ proposed Constitution to be the Supreme Law of the Land to fulfill the Declaration’s purpose. This Constitution strictly defines the federal government as one of enumerated powers, giving it authority over specific areas of our national life, splitting its powers between three branches that check each other, and leaves the states sovereign on all other matters. They also declared certain individual rights. Knowing that they were fallible human beings, the Framers also included an amendment process so that when the Constitution was found lacking, a complex supermajority could change it (and have, twenty-seven times).

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This is a subject I’ve taken a few days to look into. It interested me for a couple of reasons: To highlight the president as a national leader; and, to show how they articulate and carry out their political values. For this I chose Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan. Johnson because he reinforced the Roosevelt paradigm and cemented modern liberalism with the “Great Society” program. Reagan, because he led a reactionary conservative revolution against that paradigm. A revolution in the making since the time of Johnson. This isn’t to offer any critiques but is more along the lines of presenting history and appreciating the times, differences, and evolution of our nation’s politics, leaders, and ideology. And it certainly isn’t an all encompassing, exhaustive piece of analysis. I didn’t intend for it be.

Presidents differ greatly in their views on the proper role of government. Lyndon Johnson had a strong liberal ideology when it came to domestic affairs. He believed government was legally bound and obligated to take care of the disadvantaged and protect the welfare of society. In his inaugural speech, Johnson laid out his vision by using the words justice and injustice as code words for equality and inequality. Those words were used six times in his speech. The word freedom was used only once. It is here that he was articulating his goal for a “just” America. His “Great Society.”
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Earlier this month three judges sat down from 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hash out the constitutionality of Obama’s heath care plan. The panel was in response to two lawsuits filed by Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli and Liberty University. Now it seems this is just as much as a political question than constitutional one. The judges were pulled from a pool of 14 candidates. The three judges selected could be decidedly in favor of Obama’s politics. That is because all three judges were Democratic appointees.

This is how they were “pulled.”

Under the rules of the 4th Circuit, judges are picked to sit on particular cases by “a computer program designed to achieve total random selection,” the court said. The third member of the panel, Judge Diana Motz of Maryland, is a President Clinton appointee.

Even if this comes off as a setback to those who find the law it’s very likely the appeals will wind up at the steps of the Supreme Court.

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That recently announced U.S. Senate Candidate Adam Hasner (FL) has already been attacked with what looks to be a dubious, politically motivated ethics complaint by Democrats suggests he’s seen as a serious threat to win and that one of at least two other factors may be in play.

The ethics complaint against Hasner was filed by Diana Demarest, former secretary of the Palm Beach County Democratic party. “I didn’t like Adam Hasner when he was in the Florida House. I certainly don’t want him as my senator. He’s a right-wing zealot,’’ Demarest said.

Either one of his opponents, perhaps Charlie Crist protege, George LeMieux, is stealing a page from his mentor, co-operating with Democrats in hopes of hurting a GOP opponent to win an election, or Florida Democrats see the Tea Party-aligned Hasner as the more serious threat and are already trying to soften him up for the General election.

LeMieux was deputy attorney general when Crist was Florida AG. He masterminded the campaign that put Crist in the Governor’s Mansion. He served as Crist’s first gubernatorial chief of staff.

The latter is more likely. A Democrat calling a GOP primary candidate a “right-wing zealot” while filing a politically motivated ethics complaint, isn’t much of a criticism for now; nor is it likely to hold up in November 2012. While a Conservative, Hasner has managed to repeatedly win re-election in a Democrat-controlled county. More on Hasner here.

As a state representative from Democratic-controlled Palm Beach County, Adam successfully won re-election three times without ever sacrificing his bedrock conservative principles. Adam served alongside Marco Rubio for six years, and in 2007 was tapped by then-Speaker Rubio to serve as Majority Leader for the Republican caucus.

When asked how he consistently achieved re-election under the circumstances, Hasner cited the need for aggressive, effective communication of his principled conservativism, even to moderates, during a recent one-on-one phone interview. With the nation, including Florida, shifting somewhat Right in 2010 and a GOP base increasingly convinced that accomplished conservatives can win espousing their ideology, as opposed to running away from it, Hasner’s message has a good chance of resonating with Florida Republicans in the primary.

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It was as if someone was trying to send me a message. It seemed as though every radio talk show, every commentary, each political debate during the past twenty-four hours centered on the issue of individual power vs. collectivism in American society. It is my contention that individual power based on a trust in the “goodness” of man is at the heart of what made the United States great. Secondarily I believe that the difference in that trust in the ultimate intention of the American citizenry is the main issue that divides the Conservative and the Liberal/Progressive movements.

Allow me to explain, but first  please understand that for the purpose of this discussion I will be speaking in absolutes. It simply makes it easier to argue. We should all understand  that in-between the polar opposites of of which are discussed are thousands of gradients of gray. The two polar opposites of which I speak are of course Liberalism and Conservatism.

The Conservative philosophy is based on a belief in the ultimate goodness of man. That is given the choice between doing “good” and doing “bad.” Conservatives believe that when free enough to make the decision, man will do the right thing. After all man, as the bible says, was created in God’s image. Like God, man will strive to do good, either for the benefit of himself and family and/or for the benefit of the nation itself. Therefore as your beliefs move closer to conservatism along the political spectrum those beliefs will include that lesser government is needed because man can govern himself.

Conservatives focus on the individual and because that individual is born with the inclination to do well, any rights that come with that inherent goodness, come from God who also gave man that inherent goodness. Hence the belief expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In Conservative thought, government’s primary role is to protect those unalienable rights.

Thus when you understand the Declaration of Independence you also understand that the American Revolution was based on conservative principles.

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My campaign for U.S. Congress ended with a smile–not because of the results, which were disappointing, but because of what it achieved. We ran a tough, issue-oriented, well-organized campaign. We out-raised incumbent Democrat Jan Schakowsky 2-to-1 in the third quarter. We raised the Republican vote by nearly 40 percent over 2006, and helped Republicans nearby and statewide by forcing our opponent to defend her seat.

We also sent a powerful message to the Obama administration about the need for stronger U.S. support for Israel. While Israel was never the focus of the campaign, it was an important priority. We led a nationwide push-back against the far-left J Street organization, which supported Schakowsky lavishly. In so doing, we helped Republicans defeat J Street Democrats in races across the country, further marginalizing the group.

Still, losing by a 66-31 margin is tough. Part of the reason we lost was that our opponent ran a relentlessly negative campaign, spending massive amounts of money on mailings falsely accusing me of wanting to “dismantle” Medicare and the like. She also made full use of the advantages of incumbency–dominating media coverage, promising federal dollars to key voting areas, and (corruptly, I believe) intervening in local foreclosures.

Yet even those deplorable tactics cannot, by themselves, explain the result. The reason 9th district voters chose to retain the biggest spender in the U.S. House, in a year when much of the rest of the country rose up in revolt against excessive spending, was that Chicago and its immediate surrounding areas are heavily dependent on that spending. Cities like Chicago are no longer engines of industry, but wards of the government.

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The election is now over and the results are in – except in Alaska, Colorado, Washington, and a congressional district here and there. And one by one the usual suspects are weighing in with their comments. Most of these are utterly predictable, and some are downright mendacious, as one would expect.

When President Obama denied that the biggest Republican victory since the 1920s was a referendum on the policies embraced by his party and his administration, he was either lying or deep in denial – and the same thing can be said about The New York Times, which opined yesterday in an utterly predictable manner that – while “Tuesday’s election was indeed a ’shellacking’ for the Democrats, as President Obama admitted after a long night of bad news” – it “was hardly an order from the American people to discard the progress of the last two years and start over again.”

Mr. Obama was on target when he said voters howled in frustration at the slow pace of economic recovery and job creation. To borrow his running automotive metaphor, voters threw the keys at Republicans and told them to drive for a while, but gave almost no indication of what direction to drive in.

To believe this, one would have to be convinced that the voters were unaware that the Republicans were committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, to extending the Bush tax cuts, and to reducing federal expenditures to the level of 2008. To argue its truth, one would have to ignore the Pledge to America – which is, of course, what our President and our erstwhile newspaper of record did.

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Click to Play

Let’s just cut to the chase: your fearless leader Andrew Bretibart is our guest today and we cover the panoply of conflicts that seem to follow Andrew where ever he goes. A brief list: Most of Twitter, the folks in the parking lot of the Sears Center, Glenn Beck, Shirley Sherrod, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Harvey Fierstein. And that’s just in the first ten minutes. We also talk about the Tea Party, the mid-terms, and we get a valuable lesson in crowd control.

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Are you going to Washington, DC to partake in the Tax Day Tea Party Rally this Thursday?  If you are and you will be arriving on Wednesday, Big Government has a party for you!

Wednesday night starting at 6:00 pm, Big Government is co-sponsoring a happy hour for tea party activists who are coming to town for the rally.  Along with other co-hosts, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, The Daily Caller, Freedomworks and my group, First Friday, Big Government will be gathering at Lounge 201 on Capitol Hill near the Senate offices in Washington.

Lounge 201 is located at 201 Massachusetts Ave, NE, and the drink specials run all night.  So if you’re in town, thinking about coming to town, or plan to be around, make sure you swing by the happy hour for your chance to meet and network with like-minded, freedom loving individuals for a night of relaxation before the big day.

The drinks will be cheap, the conversation will be interesting and many political celebrities and elected officials have been invited to stop by, so this could be your best shot to have a private conversation with them. And don’t miss your chance to mix and mingle with some of your favorite Big Government contributors and staff!

See you there!

In my other life, I’m a food writer for The Boston Herald – a cultural raisin in the sun in the far-left world of food journalism here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

Voltaire

So I was shocked, during a dinner the other night with a bunch of folks in the biz, when one local restaurant critic declared that he had “a very illiberal” view of abortion: he was pro-life! Several table-mates nearly spit up their merlot and brie.

I stood by his side, but not by his phraseology. “It’s a liberal view if you’re the baby,” I said, making my point but not many friends in the process.

The incident highlighted an issue that’s been eating at me for quite some time: the misuse of the word “liberal” in the current political lexicon.

As you know, the American cultural divide is defined by two terms: on the right we have “conservatives” and on the left we have “liberals.”

There’s only one problem: the leftists are anything but “liberal.” In fact, I stopped using the term “liberal” to describe leftists quite some time ago. I call them what they are: “leftists,” i.e., people who espouse weakness in the face of dictators overseas and favor a dictatorial big-government doctrine here at home.

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Last Tuesday, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas wrote an op-ed in The Hill claiming the center-right nation was a myth. In the article he points out that it is impossible for it to be a center-right nation due to the fact that there are strong democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. He also cites Gallup polls claiming that even though 40% identify themselves as conservative, it is not a majority. It is unclear if he is trying to convince us, or himself, that we are not a center-right nation.

It is true that there is a strong liberal majority in the House and Senate. However, that cannot be explained to the fact that this nation leans to the left. Moulitsas makes no mention to the fact that without Obama at the top of the ticket, conservatives have done very well. In the special runoff election a month after Obama was elected, Saxby Chambliss was elected with 57 percent of the vote, nearly 10 more percentage points then he had a month earlier in the general election. Or the stunning victory of Scot Brown in MA by 5 percentage points to win a seat that had been  inhabited by a Democrat for 47 years. He also pays no mention to the fact that Virginia, who has two Democrat Senators and voted for Obama in 2008, elected a strong conservative by a margin of 19 points in 2009. He also ignores the fact that in New Jersey they elected a Republican governor.

In the election of 2006 and 2008 voters wanted change, but they did not want the major change that the Obama administration is trying to achieve. Obama won the election by running on conservative ideals like cutting taxes and cutting spending.  In fact, Obama’s plan to tax people that made over $250,000 was a highly contested issue in the election. The American people did not vote a complete government takeover of health care.

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The withdrawal of Dede Scozzafava from the special election for Congress in upstate New York has predictably set off another wave of media-led hand-wringing about the health of the GOP. (See here and here, for example.) These stories are like crack for reporters, especially those with a hard-left slant. It is always framed as a battle between ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates,’ but the focus is actually much narrower.

To Big Media, conservatism comes in only one flavor, social conservatism, namely anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage and a smattering of other issues that would fall flat over canapés and seltzer (liberals don’t seem to drink anymore). That Dede was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage fits the narrative perfectly for the media. End of story.

But, the media, and political leaders would be wise to dig a bit deeper into the story. Yes, Dede was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, but she was also pro-government spending, pro-taxes and pro-Big Labor, to name just a few other issues. When a Republican candidate regularly seeks out the endorsement of ACORN and wins the endorsement of DailyKos, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that large segments of the party might have some misgivings about supporting the candidate. (And they would be right, since she has now endorsed the Democrat in the race.)

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