That will not change whether the Establishment’s candidate Mitt Romney wins in November or not.  After the election, the battle really starts; what is happening now are just skirmishes in a fight for control of the Republican Party.  Not the soul of the party – if it had one, it auctioned it off long ago – but the mechanism of the party.  The Grand Old Party matters only as a vehicle to carry our banner forward.

To do that, we need to seize control, and we do that by destroying the Establishment starting next November 7th.

Superficially, it might seem that we – the outsiders, the Tea Party, the conservatives, whatever the label – are outgunned by opponents with their hands on the reins of power, money in amounts we can’t hope to match, and pals in the media backing them.  But if we understand our strengths, and our opponents’ weaknesses, we can not only compete but eventually prevail.

First, let’s understand our opponent.

The GOP Establishment is an amorphous entity composed of politicians, media types, consultants, writers, lobbyists, party hacks and donors whose first priority is protecting their positions and privileges.  Power, and holding onto it, is more important than ideology.  That’s where we conservatives differ – we have no formal power or position, so changing the power structure doesn’t scare us.  We have nothing to lose; the GOP Establishment has everything to lose.

So, how do we beat it?

The Oscar-nominated film Moneyball tells the story of the Oakland A’s of the early 2000’s and how it had to adapt to compete with clubs like the Yankees with payrolls four times its size.  Under manager Billy Beane, the club reassessed what it thought it knew about baseball, gained a clear understanding of what made a team successful, and then focused ruthlessly on the long game to build a winning team.

What is the key to winning?  In baseball, it is runs – you get enough runs over the course of a year, you tend to be a winning team.  That’s the long game; the short game is the game tomorrow afternoon.  It’s nice to win that fight too, but the secret of moneyball is building success over time by playing the numbers.

In politics, winning takes the form of offices.  You win enough political offices, you eventually become the establishment.  And that’s what we want – numbers, as in numbers of offices our people hold.  We want our vision of a free market, Constitution-based, strong America to become the nation’s social paradigm – the right wing equivalent of the left’s current campaign to turn America into a western European welfarocracy.  We do that by getting our people into office in ever greater numbers over time.

That’s the long game, and we won’t lose it.

We won’t lose it because, despite what you see in the media and the rise of moderate Mitt, all of the energy and all of the excitement is with us.  All of it – a bunch of BYU kids bussed into Florida to yell at a Romney rally is not “excitement.”  It’s an admission of defeat.

The most important part of the Tea Party/conservatives’ rise since 2009 has not been its remarkably rapid rise to significance and its ability to affect marquee elections in 2010.  That’s the short game, and while it matters, what matters more is that it drew huge numbers of conservatives into the political process.

The next generation of GOP leaders will be Tea Party/conservatives.  They are the folks starting out now to compete for the kind of local and state party and political offices that lay the foundation for the party’s future.  These offices are vital – they are our farm team, a place for future congressional and senate candidates to gain experience and build resumes while implementing Constitutional conservative policies right now that will improve voters’ lives and win them over to our cause.

Billy Beane’s strategy was to find undervalued players – essentially, to sign players who got a lot of hits but didn’t cost much.  Why pay $7 million for a guy who gets on base 35% of the time when you can pay $600,000 for two guys who each do it 30% of the time?  He bought runs; we “buy” offices, and our currency is commitment, passion and effort.

We are uniquely positioned to do it.  In this environment, the moderates and squishy pseudo-cons that for so long dominated GOP lower offices will be scared off by the volatility of the Tea Party/conservative base.  It’s the Tea Party/conservatives who will be motivated to run, who have the excited backers to man phone banks and walk precincts, who have the passion for it.  Being a precinct captain or central committee member is a pain – you need to really want to do it.  And we do.

Of course, there is no way to centrally implement the strategy like Billy Beane did – he picked the players and built his team.  As the Tea Party/conservatives have shown, they are self-organizing – they don’t need a centralized organization to operate.  Conservative groups can facilitate the trend – running candidate boot camps, perhaps throwing a few dollars to down-ticket races – but this trend is happening on its own.  It’s grassroots, not astroturf.

The GOP establishment, by definition, is centralized.  That can be an advantage, at least in the major races.  There’s no question that the GOP Establishment has the edge in the short game – the money Mitt used to nuke his opponents proves that.  But the Establishment has little ability to influence anything except the most important and visible races – it’s neither that powerful, nor that rich, nor that organized.  This leaves a void that only we Tea Party/conservatives can fill.

So, in the long game, we will take over the GOP from the current GOP Establishment.  The old guard will die out, whether retiring, getting primaried out or being caught tap dancing in airport restrooms.  There’s no coming wave of button-down, “sensible” moderates honing their skills as school board members and rural water panel commissioners.

We are the future.  That’s the long game.  In a decade, the GOP Establishment we know today will be gone, swept away by time, disillusionment and voter disgust.  The nomination of Romney – which seems likely – will be its last hurrah.

Yes, if Romney wins, expect the GOP Establishment to decide that it didn’t need us.  And if it loses, expect it to blame us.  Who cares?  Let it revise history all it likes; its denial and smugness will only keep it from undertaking the kind of serious intropsection that might save it.

The GOP Establishment is a zombie, a dead power structure walking.  It will get a few punches in before it goes down – Exhibit A is Mitt, Exhibit B the pile of bodies that were the Not-Mitts – but go down it will.

The short game is important too as a supporting effort.  Understanding your strategic situation is a key to success, and that sometimes requires accepting hard truths.  The fact is that we are probably only a slight majority of a minority political party.  America is not a Tea Party/conservative nation – not yet.  That’s another critical reason to work at the grassroots and locally, to start implementing policies that will sway more Americans to our banner.  But in the short term, we simply are not strong enough to seize and hold the reins of power at the highest levels of government.

The Tea Party/Constitutional conservative movement is still an immature movement, not in the sense that it is childish but in the sense that we have not yet fully grown to our full strength.  We are having growing pains.  Candidates like the ridiculous Christine O’Donnell or failed Joe Miller in Alaska in 2010 were simply sub-par, but that was not because Tea Partiers are inherently incompetent but because we lacked experience and ended up with some flakes.

That will happen less and less as we grow savvier.  And conservatives will have less need to rally around massively flawed candidates with questionable non-Establishment credentials like Newt Gingrich.  We can and will do better.

That is not to say we should not fight in the short term; we can and should.  The conservative alternatives to Mitt, while each failed for their own reasons, still forced him to the right and are keeping him there.  The threat to Orrin Hatch, who saw his squish buddy Bob Bennett tossed out by Tea Party/conservative backers of the awesome Senator Mike Lee, has turned him sharply back to the right.  This is good.

Richard Lugar is now learning the Tea Party/conservatives are not to be trifled with as Richard Mourdock hits him with a primary challenge.  Also good.  Fear is our friend – if these spineless weather vanes are afraid of us at election time, maybe they’ll vote like conservatives in the off-years.

We need to start planning now for the battle after the election.  If Barack Obama was not such a fundamental threat to the foundation of our democracy, it might be conceivable not to support likely nominee Mitt Romney.  As it is, not voting for Romney is a vote for Obama, and the situation is simply too perilous not to do everything possible to toss Obama out in November.  We need to back Mitt even though we will get no credit for doing so.

If Romney wins, the focus needs to be on keeping him on the right despite his squishy instincts.  The best way to do that is to elect the most conservative Congress possible – and to draw a line in the sand on compromises over issues like repealing Obamacare.  We need to not be shy about the potential for a conservative primary challenger in 2016.

If Obama wins, our goal needs to be to steel the limp noodle spines of the GOP Establishment to fight a no quarter rearguard action against this lawless administration until 2016 rolls around with a crop of potential candidates who won’t seem to have piled out of a clown car.

The key to leveraging wimpy senators and representatives?  The 2014 elections and the ruthless primarying of non-performers.  There is nothing an incumbent hates more than the specter of a brutal primary – and at age five years, the Tea Party/conservatives will have a lot more experienced, savvy candidates looking to move up and ready to strike if they sense weakness in the guy holding what they see as their next job.  Again, fear of the ballot box is our ally.

Besides political offices, the Tea Party has a unique capability to undercut the current GOP-oriented media/think tank establishment.  Much of the conservative media and academia are already Tea Party/conservative-friendly.  The rest will find themselves marginalized more and more if they continue to distance themselves from the Tea Party/conservative insurgency.  And the Tea Party/conservative insurgency is, of course, actively creating its own outlets (like Big Government and the other Breitbart sites) as well as institutions and events, like BlogCon 2012.

Here are the facts:  We are getting stronger every day.  They are getting weaker.  And a little political moneyball – putting our strengths against their weaknesses in the long game – will do a great deal to hasten the GOP Establishment’s demise.

And no one will miss it.

Woodbrook Elementary, (principal Lisa Molinaro), allowed leftist activists into the school to train third graders in writing songs which were performed at an assembly organized by an outside group –  Kid Pan Alley – in October of this year.  The tune the 3^rd graders “wrote” and performed could have come from the soundtrack at Zuccotti park, minus the drug overdoses and rapes.

Some people have it all,

but they don’t think that they have enough

They want more money

A faster ride

They’re not content

Never satisfied

Yes-  they are the 1 percent

I used to be one of the 1 percent

I worked all the time

Never saw my family

Couldn’t make life rhyme

Then the bubble burst

It really, really hurt

I lost my money

Lost my pride

Lost my home

Now I’m part of the 99

I used to be sad now I’m satisfied

Cause I really have enough

Though I lost my yacht and plane

Didn’t need that extra stuff

Could have been much worse

You don’t need to be first

Cause I’ve got my friends

Here by my side

Don’t need it all

I’m happy to be part of the 99.

Remember, these are third graders.  The simplistic left wing economic nonsense of this ditty boggles the mind.  But to an impressionistic third grader, it plants poisonous seeds at odds with long egalitarian American traditions that disdain class hatred.  It mocks American traditions of industry, hard work and accomplishment.  It teaches the young to distrust and dislike, which of course is a tactic employed by thug cultures and governments throughout history.

Kid Pan Alley’s infiltration into government schools goes well beyond Woodbrook Elementary in Charlottesville.  They have a presence in Payne Elementary in Lynchburg (VA), Union Elementary in Montpelier (VT), Campbell Court Elementary in Martinsville (VA), Burnley Elementary in Charlottesville (VA), Thompson Elementary in Marshall (VA), Pierce Elementary in Remington (VA), Red Hill Elementary in Virginia, Brownsville Elementary in Crozet (VA), and many many more.

Consider the results of Kid Pan Alley’s residency inside Parker Elementary Waimea, Hawaii.  They spent a week inside the school writing the song “Walk to Japan” with an apocalyptic environmental message.  “Reduce, reuse and recycle, maybe it’s time to face what we messed up, cause if we don’t save the ocean, we’ll have to walk to Japan.”

When you consider the leftist activists who introduced this garbage into Woodbrook Elementary, the agenda is even more clear.  Kid Pan Alley receives money from the William and Mary Greve Foundation.

The Greve Foundation funds many other causes at odds with American traditions, including the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which is run by a 9-11 conspiracy theorist.  The Greve Foundation is headed by John Kiser, III, author of Communist Entrepreneurs : Unknown Innovators in the Global Economy.  (From a review: “the book is of value in confronting tired stereotypes about the inherent inferiority of technology under Communism.”)  Kiser is from Sperryville, Virginia, which might explain why so many Virginia elementary schools.

You can watch Kid Pan Alley’s video “If I Change One Thing” here for another whiff of Occupy.  The kids sing the answer: “If I could change one thing, I’d change all the rules.  Freedom would be free.  I’d be my own boss no matter what the cost.”  Sort of like a mob.

The nonsense continues in the song:  “What if kids could vote, its love that sets us free, when everyone has what they needed.  There would be no more war. Yeah, that’s what kids are for.”

Kid Pan Alley is also skilled at messaging in subtle ways.  It’s not often you find such veiled disdain for this group of heroes.  From Kid Pan Alley’s Changing the History of the World:  “Each generation adds to the history of the world, each generation does it’s part, it doesn’t have to be winning World War II.”  Why choose the Greatest Generation as a contrast?  Was it because the contrast between liberty and tyranny was so stark then, so clear to most Americans in that age?  Was it because moral relativism had few adherents among those who won World War II?

I’ve just scratched the surface of Kid Pan Alley in this article.  There is no telling what other subtle and obvious leftist messages are being brought into government schools by Kid Pan Alley’s musical projects.  Does Kid Pan Alley receive any taxpayer money?  If so from whom, and how much?  What bureaucrats are making the decisions to fund this presence in schools throughout the country?  What are the backgrounds of the board members?  Perhaps the readers of BigGovernment can explore further themselves and report.

Bill Ayers speaking to a crowd at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA on December 14, 2011. Occupy Harrisburg invited Ayers to speak. Photograph © Paul Hair, 2011.

This is the second time I have covered Occupy Harrisburg.

Bill Ayers spoke at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA on December 14 at the invitation of the militant Occupy Harrisburg. I estimated between 100 and 200 people attended the event.

Eric Papenfuse owns the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Papenfuse, a former public school teacher, previously invited Ayers to speak in south-central Pennsylvania in 2010. He wrote an OP-ED explaining why he did so and The Patriot-News published it, revealing his radical, anti-capitalist views.

I summarize the night in a list of bullet points in the following section but I don’t go into extremely thorough commentary because there is a bigger point here than Bill Ayers and Occupy Harrisburg.

One final note: I break this document into two parts: the first part contains the summarization of the event. The second part is where I discuss the bigger point than Bill Ayers and the anti-free-market Occupy Harrisburg. Those who wish for a shorter read may only wish to read the first part. . . .

Read the rest of this report here.

The news of UC Davis police pepper spraying innocent #OccupyUCDavis revolutionaries shocked and outraged the nation. One can only imagine how outraged the nation will be once it learns of a shockingly underreported story that the Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System published last week. “Marines face OC spray” details the following:

One at a time, instructors lined up the augmentees, stood three paces away and sprayed real OC in their faces. The spray ran down their foreheads and into their eyes, causing them to immediately close. The Marines exhibited uncontrollable tearing, coughing, choking plus an extreme burning sensation on any exposed skin from the OC spray.

Outraged yet? If not, you will be soon! And if you are, well you may just want to stop reading now lest the next sentences drive you into uncontrollable hysteria.

After being sprayed, the augmentees had to navigate through an obstacle course of Marines holding pads, representing potential attackers. The SAF Marines fought through the course blindly throwing punches, knee strikes and baton strikes.

So, it wasn’t enough torture just to spray American citizens in the face with pepper spray, the federal government then forced them to run through an obstacle course even as they were incapacitated! Clearly, the legacy of George W. Bush lives on.

Some people might argue that since the Marines signed up to be Marines they volunteered to be pepper sprayed. But that’s nonsense! After all, other people might argue that the #OccupyUCDavis revolutionaries volunteered to be pepper sprayed when they antagonized the police and even provoked them. And we all know that that’s just not true!

Please help me in spreading the word about the federal government pepper spraying American citizens. Make this story go viral so we can further enrage the sensibilities of the 99% of this nation that are fighting to overthrow the last remnants of a free society and replace it with the wonderful tyranny of communism!

That’s their right, as long as they pursue their activities after school.

But more and more American K-12 teachers are bringing their politics into the classroom, brazenly acknowledging their effort to indoctrinate and recruit a new generation of radical, anti-American students.

“The long period of self-censorship among educators regarding class and labor issues may no longer hold,” wrote radical educator Rob Linne in his book “Organizing the Curriculum.”

“We cannot claim to be teaching for social justice if we ignore the class warfare being waged all around us. Bringing labor into the arena of K-12 education will undoubtedly meet political resistance, but an increasing number of educators are motivated to take up the challenge.”

That frightening approach to teaching is what motivated Education Action Group to publish a new book titled “Indoctrination: How ‘Useful Idiots’ are Using Our Schools to Subvert American Exceptionalism.”

You can watch a short promotional video for the book by clicking here.

The book, authored by EAG Chief Executive Officer Kyle Olson, with assistance from staffers Ben Velderman and Steve Gunn, is available on Amazon.com.

It explores dozens of examples of radical public school teachers and their politically active unions taking liberty with our children by teaching left-wing philosophy as fact.

It also illustrates how radical left-wing think tanks around the nation are producing and distributing special lesson plans that attack the fundamentals of American society and plant the seeds of class warfare in young minds.

In his foreword for the book, FOX News contributor and former Clinton advisor Dick Morris bemoans the fact that educators are willing to brainwash young minds before they have the ability to fully understand and judge issues on their own.

“We have become accustomed to hearing American history and politics misinterpreted by leftist university professors,” Morris writes. “But (now) we see the insidious indoctrination at the elementary and secondary levels. At least university students can think for themselves. (The book) explains how 7- and 8-year-olds are taught to embrace an atheistic, leftist philosophy virtually from the time they enter school.”

I, Tomato

The book clearly illustrates that teachers unions want to create a future class of organized labor activists or sympathizers.
A curriculum produced by the radical California Federation of Teachers is called “ Golden Lands, Working Hands.”

To reverberate with its adolescent audience, the lesson features a rap video with the lyrics, “The age of railroads meant mass transportation, but did rich men make the trains of our nation? Psych! It was the working people who laid the tracks. And see who did the work and got the job done. While lazy lone ranger was out havin’ fun.”

After the minimum wage line, the cartoon character in the video falls in the grave he just dug for himself, then a pig rises out of a pile of money bags. There is nobody in the video defending the “pig” who invested the money to build the railroads and create the jobs. That would have destroyed the whole purpose of the lesson.

Younger students are not immune from these very political “lessons.”

There is a popular story/lesson plan for young children titled “I Tomato.” The main character, a tomato plant, tells readers about the loving care it received from various migrant workers, and how it was mistreated by being sprayed with pesticides.

The story gives full credit for food production to the field workers – “Juana, Dolores and Rajib; Finoy and Carlos, Connie, Lupe, Marcos and Jose Manuel – it is to them I owe my life and you owe your tomatoes.”

That’s great, but what about the investor who risked his savings to establish the farm, hire the workers and provide the necessary materials to grow the tomatoes? No mention of him. But the kids do get a union promo at the end of the story:

“Many farm workers belong to a union,” the story says. “Do you know what a union is? If you were a worker, would you want to belong to a union? How can you find out if your fruits and vegetables were picked by union workers?”

The book also discusses Chicago teacher Kati Gilson, who taught her preschoolers about her 2011 trip to Madison to protest the collective bargaining policies of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. She also taught them new words like “strike,” “collective bargaining,” and “negotiate.”

“My preschoolers understand what a protest march is and why it is important,” Gilson wrote.

“As we gear up for what looks like a big battle it is important for us to teach our children and families why we are taking a stand.”

Is this what we pay school taxes for?

What would the Black Panthers do?

Many radical teachers obviously want their students to disapprove of the United States and mistrust their government.

One chapter in the book explores the growing pattern of teachers leading elementary children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Earth, instead of America. One educator, Rosalie Tyler Paul of Maine, wrote a piece calling for everyone to reject love of country and embrace globalism.

“We can see that the nation is not the parcel most in need of our loyalty and allegiance,” Paul wrote. “The purpose and courage we need can be found better in Earth citizenship that in nationalism.”

Wayne Au, a former Seattle high school teacher, wrote about teaching his students the story of the violent Black Panthers and their “Ten Point Program,” and encouraging students to develop their own lists of political priorities, based on modern issues.

One successful student wrote, “We want the mask of capitalism lifted and economic classes disbanded,” and “The enslavement of the middle of the lower classes by the bourgeoisie must end.” Au praised the student’s work for its “relentless attack on corporate America.”

Even school math lessons are not immune. One chapter of the book refers to “The Guide for Integrating Issues of Social and Economic Justice into Mathematics Curriculum,” by Jonathan Osler.

In his guide, Osler suggests giving a lesson about mathematical averages using casualty numbers from the war in Iraq. He suggests teaching probability by having students explore the probability that a police traffic stop will target a person of color. He also calls for a geometry lesson based on “environmental racism” that would require students to “determine the density of toxic waste facilities, factories, dumps, etc. in the neighborhood.”

Way to go, Mr. Osler. Instead of teaching a generation of youngsters to appreciate their nation and the freedom they have to make their lives better, you want to create an angry bunch of revolutionaries who are determined to destroy the very system that makes it possible to work for change.

As one blogger who reviewed our book wrote, “Olson shows that kids are being taught everything but what parents are sending them to school to learn. This is a solid book, but it’s shocking in what it uncovers.”

Would Jesus be camping with the protesters in the city park? Would he be leading an occupy “assembly”, singing solidarity choruses, and heralding the demise of capitalism?  If one takes the time to honestly review the stories in the four gospels, the only possible answer is a resounding, “NO!” Jesus lived under Roman rule.  The Romans oppressed Jesus’ fellow Jews, stationed military in Jewish homes and cities, and exercised political power over Jewish territory, interfered with Jewish religious life, and siphoned off Jewish wealth through tribute.

Though living under such conditions, Jesus never advocated revolution or political upheaval.  The gospel according to Matthew says Jesus instructed his disciple Peter, “go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee [as tribute].”  The gospel of Mark records Jesus as saying “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  These commands to pay tribute to a truly oppressive government hardly sounds like a revolutionary intent on overthrowing the political system.

In all of the gospel accounts, Jesus is not recorded as signing a single petition, delivering a single political speech, leading a single protest, demanding a single government entitlement, or advocating a single tax policy change.  Jesus’ lack of political activism should not deter us from engaging in these activities!  Many Christians, along with numerous non-Christians such as myself, understand that Jesus was neither a community organizer nor an activist!  As the gospel of John quotes Jesus as saying to Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

What would Jesus say to the 31% of Occupy Wall Street protesters who would support violence to advance their agenda?  After Jesus’ last supper, he visited the garden of Gethsemane.  Roman soldiers and others alerted to Jesus’ whereabouts by Judas Iscariot approached to arrest him.  Peter, in an effort to defend Jesus, lobbed the ear off one of those present.  Jesus immediately reprimanded Peter, saying, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”  This is hardly an endorsement of violence for political ends.

Lastly, Jesus did not advocate forced redistribution of wealth.  Jesus did instruct a ruler who approached him for spiritual guidance to “sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”  Those who use this example to portray Jesus as a socialist visionary miss the point.  In context, the story warns us that self-absorption can inhibit our spiritual lives.  In no way does it advocate seizure of another’s personal property.

Overall, it appears the Leftists are proclaiming the gospels according to Che, Marx, Mao, and Castro rather than the gospels according to Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.  It’s only the Left’s recently fabricated, politically expedient Jesus who would occupy Wall Street.

Los Angeles became the first city to officially endorse the Occupy movement when its city council unanimously passed a resolution affirming the group’s right to camp out on lawns in front of city hall. The council members had glowing words for the movement.

“These are things worthy of protest. And I thank you for speaking out and helping move the debate forward,” said City Councilman Paul Koretz.

Many of the protesters had similarly positive words for their local politicians, as well as local law enforcement. Reason.tv was on the scene to ask protesters about their general attitudes towards government power.  Is Occupy Los Angeles (and Occupy Wall Street) simply a pro-government movement, or is there room for libertarian sentiment within it?

The answer is… well, it’s complicated. While we spoke to a few small government libertarians at the event, others eschewed anti-government rhetoric and said that criticism of the Federal Reserve is a libertarian “pet issue” distracting from the real matter at hand: economic justice.

The Occupy movement remains politically diverse and difficult to pigeonhole, and many of its members seem proud to remain fiercely independent, saying they will not allow politicians or unions to co-opt their movement.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller and Tim Cavanaugh.  Shot by Paul Detrick and Tracy Oppenheimer. Edited by Weissmueller. About 5 minutes long.

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