House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed details of his upcoming keynote speech to be delivered Thursday evening at the CPAC conference in the Washington.  Ryan emphasized “Conservatives in 2012 Must Go Bold”, not only to win the general election in November but  to offer the country a path back to prosperity.

As Conservative leaders prepare for the nasty fight ahead to win the White House, Ryan offered an alternative solution other than focusing solely on President Obama’s failed policies.  He mentioned the American people need a “clear choice of two futures” through a very specific vision of restoration.

Ryan warns if Obama is re-elected a severe debt crisis would likely occur within the next two to three years and if Republicans prevail, they will have the chance to preempt that type of economic disaster.  He mentioned the worst case scenario would be our country becoming a complete “welfare state” due to Obama’s agenda and current track record.  The Chairman states, “At CPAC I’ll make the case for clarifying the choice facing the American people: our principled plan to restore the American Idea versus the President’s failed agenda of debt, doubt, and decline.”

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I’ve come to a cross roads, and I believe many of you are with me. I no longer have faith that members of the Grand Old Party can represent me as a classical liberal or more specifically as a Conservative-Libertarian, and neither do I believe the majority of the members of the party share true forms of those ideologies.

This feeling began developing after the 2010 election when several friends and colleagues of mine and I developed ConservativeCongress.com to assess every single candidate self-proclaimed to be running as a conservative in the entire country. Thousands of unpaid and thankless hours were put into the project by myself and my friends. I myself put in roughly 2,000 to 3,000 hours alone. Then I watched as various state Tea Party groups and supposedly conservative minding groups signed off on the status quo. I became sick as state after state sent D.C. main stays and beltway insiders back to flap their gums about conservative principles while we all watched continuous compromise and a lack of any leadership with the House at their disposal.

The final blow personally for me was when I watched a man take my home district who had not lived in his home state in 18 years and also did not even own property in the state in which he was running for office. I’ve had the great privilege in my lifetime to travel extensively and live in various areas of our great nation. I remember very clearly living abroad in Australia some seven years ago and then upon returning spending the next four years moving around for graduate school and work. When I made it back home I hardly recognized the place in which I grew up. Everything had changed.

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The GOP Establishment we keep hearing about is real, and it is also doomed.

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.

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The number of Republicans in the country inched up half a percentage point in January, while the number of Democrats, 32.5%, dipped to the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports.

During January, 35.9% of Americans considered themselves Republicans. That’s up from 35.4% in December and the highest number of Republicans measured since December 2010.

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At the most recent Florida debate, a verbal slug-fest emerged between the outspoken Newt Gingrich and the current leading GOP front-runner, Mitt Romney. They traded rhetorical blows on a variety of issues, but one issue stands out at this moment as a lot of attention has gone to the Latino vote – that is, the issue of immigration.

Mitt lambasted Newt for calling him “anti-immigrant,” and defended himself with the fact that his father was born in Mexico, and that his father-in-law was born in Wales. Romney also reminded Newt that Marco Rubio (whom has stressed a need for a republican immigration plan) recently called for Newt to end his “inflammatory” rhetoric. Newt then pressed Mitt for details as to how he would handle the 11 million immigrants that are already here illegally; “self-deportation” was Mitt’s response.

Now at this point, neither candidate has shown that they can secure the coveted 40% of the Hispanic vote, but the GOP has been given a unique opportunity to connect with the Latino community, which could help them towards that goal.

So, how do we “connect”? It’s easier than it might seem, as a recent conversation on the bus ride to work made clear:

“He promised us, we voted for him and he broke his promise. No more.”

Meet Lupe, once an immigrant from Michoacán (MX) and now an American from Ontario (CA). She is upset with President Obama. He not only failed to deliver on immigration-reform and job growth, but his administration actively pursued a hard-line approach to immigration that has deported hundreds of thousands. She has noticed.

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As Newt Gingrich’s challenge to the anointment of Mitt Romney heats up, the newest line of attack against the erratic former Speaker by the Romneyites is not so much that Newt is unelectable – that’s assumed, and not unreasonably.  It’s that in November the voters will recoil in horror at the Republican presidential ticket, and that Newt will take the GOP’s hopes for the Senate down with him, leaving Obama in total control of the Republic.

There are plenty of problems with a Newt Gingrich nomination – most of them a direct result of Newt’s own antics – but the developing conventional wisdom that he will be toxic to Republican Senate chances may just be totally off-base.  In fact, a Newt nomination could be the best possible thing for winning a GOP Senate majority – ironically because of people who don’t think he has a chance in hell in the general election.

The GOP has great expectations for the Senate in 2012 – winning just four seats (five if Senator Kirk fails to recover from his recent stroke and the Democratic governor of Illinois appoints another Roland Burris as the replacement before his traditional indictment) will capture the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body from the clutches of Harry Reid and the Democrats.

With the Democrat party playing defense on many more at-risk seats, the percentages are in the GOP’s favor.  Moreover, many of the senators up for elections are “conservative Democrats,” which mean flaming liberals who talk a good game about being “fiscally conservative” and “moderate” back home in their blood-red states.  With the Obama economy especially painful in the middle of the country – the administration’s stimulus money disproportionately rewarded the urban and academic communities whose support Obama is unshakeable – it should be a cakewalk not only to grab the majority but press on toward the magic number of 60.

Enter Newt.

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As President I will stop one of the biggest wastes and frauds ever perpetrated on the American people – the trillion dollar war on drugs. While falsely promising us a safer, more sober society, the war on drugs is bankrupting our state and local coffers and costs the Federal government $15 billion dollars per year. That’s five hundred dollars every second – mostly for possession of marijuana, a relatively harmless drug the effects of which are certainly no worse than alcohol, the sale of which is legal and regulated.

Think how many tax cuts we could have with the money we are spending. If you’re a Republican – think how many tax cuts (federal, state and local) could be bought with the money you’re spending to lock people up for something as dangerous as drinking. Think how many poor people could be helped with that money. We need to reform our drug laws as soon as yesterday by stopping the prohibition of marijuana and regulating its sale.

If you think the drug war makes you and your children safer, think again. The International Center for Science in Drug Policy stated: “Drug prohibition likely contributes to drug market violence and higher homicide rates.” But you don’t need to be a scientist, or the governor of a border state, to understand why: the drug war creates violent criminals.

Criminals deal drugs because drugs make them money, a lot of money. When that kind of money is in play, people kill for it. Entire armies of crime have built up on our streets and across the border in Mexico. But we can stop that tomorrow – with drug policy reform. We know that prohibition makes prices higher. Our own history with prohibition proves that. When we make something illegal, we keep the supply artificially low, and that keeps the price artificially high – and that means violence.

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In politics, as in life, there can be an overwhelming temptation to go along to get along; to be a team player; to do the easy thing even when it’s not the right thing.

For far too long, insiders from both parties have played these games. Talk up fiscal responsibility, but spend big. Talk about a federal government that fulfills its basic responsibilities, but then vote to expand it beyond all recognition so that it cannot possibly do so. Talk about doing what’s right, but then do what the establishment wants instead.

Americans deserve better—and they deserve to get to choose something better this year. In 2012, Americans have the opportunity to decisively move away from big government, built up over years and years by both parties in Washington, D.C.

As I said in Sunday’s NBC/Facebook debate, President Obama has thrown gasoline on the fire, but let’s be honest: The bonfire was raging well before Obama ever left Chicago.

Policies and spending served up by Washington, D.C. insiders, in several notable instances designed and written by Wall Street insiders to suit their needs, not ours, caused and then exacerbated this situation. In too many cases, these advocates of big spending and bad policy have used their positions of power to enrich themselves, both while in office and once outside of it. Republicans have been complicit in this scheme, just as Democrats have.

It is time for it to end.

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I’m not a big fan of Senator Schumer of New York. As I’ve noted before, he’s a doctrinaire statist who wants the government to have control over just about every aspect of our lives.

But that describes a lot of people in Washington. I guess what also bothers me is his willingness to say anything, regardless of how divorced it is from reality, to advance his short-run political agenda (sort of a Democrat version of Karl Rove).

For example, here’s part of what the clownish Empire State  Senator recently had to say about fiscal policy, as reported by a Washington Post columnist.

Schumer said, “…Republicans came in and said, `We can solve your problem by shrinking government’…We tried their theory…The American people resent government paralysis, but most of them would say that government is doing too little to help them, not too much.”

What’s remarkable about this statement is that it’s so inaccurate that we can’t even decipher what he means. I’ve come up with three possible interpretations of what he might have been trying to say, and they’re all wrong.

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From Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ concerns about the threat of big government continue to dwarf those about big business and big labor, and by an even larger margin now than in March 2009. The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high, while the 26% who say big business is down from the 32% recorded during the recession. Relatively few name big labor as the greatest threat.

Historically, Americans have always been more concerned about big government than big business or big labor in response to this trend question dating back to 1965. Concerns about big business surged to a high of 38% in 2002, after the large-scale accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom. An all-time-high 65% of Americans named big government as the greatest threat in 1999 and 2000. Worries about big labor have declined significantly over the years, from a high of 29% in 1965 to the 8% to 11% range over the past decade and a half.

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When it is all said and done, historians may look back on this GOP primary season and conclude that Mitt Romney lost his chance at the nomination on a bet.

During Saturday night’s debate, Texas Governor Rick Perry challenged Romney on a passage in his first book, claiming an early edition had said the Massachusetts Romneycare program should be a model for the national plan. Romney disputed the claim, and when Perry persisted, he jokingly offered a $10,000 bet. “Rick, I’ll tell you what:10,000 bucks? $10,000 bet? “Perry didn’t take the bet, “I’m not in the betting business.”

The average American household has an income of $59,800 (gross) which means that Romney was not only breaking Mormon doctrine, which recommends against gambling, but he was also being casual with the equivalent of 1/6th of the cash the average family lives on. He might have just as well been amazed by a supermarket scanner as George H.W. Bush was, or suggested to the unemployed, “Let Them Eat Cake,” because Mitt Romney just announced that he was totally out of touch with the American people.

Barack Obama’s attacks on the GOP centers around a supposed lack of concern for the middle class. Should Romney get the nomination, expect to see that clip over and over, because whether true or not, last night Mitt Romney gave Barack Obama the ammunition he needs to show the former Massachusetts governor has no idea about the plight of the average family. That will probably include the first segment of the answer, when he talked about growing up wealthy. “I didn’t grow up poor,” Romney said. “But I grew up with a dad who had been poor and my dad wanted to make sure I understood the lessons of hard work.”

Almost immediately after Romney’s gaffe, former Obama aide Bill Burton, who now runs a Democratic party super PAC, was tweeting a preview of future Obama attacks.

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Warning: This Post Uses a Few Words of the Mamaloshen (slang for Yiddish, means the mother tongue) So Zei Gezunt (be healthy) and continue reading.

On Yom Kippur, the rabbi stops in the middle of the service, prostrates himself beside the bema, (the platform from which services are conducted) and cries out, “Oh, God. I am not worthy!” Saul Rosenberg, president of the synagogue is so moved by this demonstration of piety that he immediately throws himself to the floor beside the rabbi and cries, “Oh, God! “I am not worthy” Then Chaim Pitkin, a tailor, jumps from his seat, prostrates himself in the aisle and cries, “Oh God! I am not worthy!” Rosenberg nudges the rabbi and whispers, “So look who thinks he’s not worthy.”

I’m not sure if this is just an American phenom or not, but here in the US Jewish Community everyone thinks they are a “macher” (big shot), not necessarily for the weight they have in the secular world but for the weight they think they have in the Jewish Community. In most cases the people who think they are “machers” are really “pisks” (nobodies). Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairman of the DNC is that kind of “pisk.”

Yesterday almost all the GOP candidates addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition in a candidates forum. The lone exception was Ron Paul who was not invited for his own health. The RJC was worried that the aged Paul would suffer undue stress being in a room with so many Jews (that is my theory, not the RJC’s rationale).

One by one the candidates spoke, each telling the truth about Obama’s anti-Israel policies, and his weak responses to the Iranian nuke program. Although Israel is an issue important to all Americans,  it is especially important to the ones of the Jewish faith.

Every candidate promising they would treat Israel like the valuable ally she is (based on their track records probably true). Many of them even promising to move the US embassy to Jerusalem (don’t hold your breath on that one, George W Bush failed to come through on that promise  and he was probably the most Pro-Israel president in my lifetime).

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In response to Peter Schweizer’s shocking revelations in Throw Them all Out, I organized a call for the resignation of our local Congressman, Spencer Bachus. I was in good company, flanked by conservative giants Andrew Breitbart and Stephen K. Bannon, as well as Business Insider and other Tea Party folks who recognize the urgent need to clean our proverbial house before attempting to sell it in 2012. Despite Bachus’s alleged improprieties, I knew my protest would engender some pushback; I was surprised, however, to see the direction from which it came.

Some Republicans whispered foul, suggesting that I should instead “pick on a liberal like Nancy Pelosi, or even Obama.” When asked, they elaborated that even if the Congressman leveraged his position to gamble against the American economy or bought based upon sensitive, inside information, “at least he’s a reliable conservative vote.”

A reliable conservative vote is necessary. But it is far from sufficient.

Voting in accordance to the wishes of one’s district is a rote activity that any halfwit could perform. Of course, politicians have to vote representative of their districts or risk being voted out; the American electorate understands that fact. However, there is a stark contrast between Congressman Bachus and Senator Jim DeMint, Governor Walker, and Congressman Paul Ryan, three exemplars of voting based on principled leadership, rather than political expediency. The difference can be more insidious than it might seem at first glance. This holds true on both the federal and local levels.

It is easy to “vote right” for your district. Nancy Pelosi wins her district, as do most representatives, not because they are right on the issues, but because they vote in accordance with their districts enough that any “rogue” votes are understated or in small proportion to the ones that please their constituents. Politicians don’t always vote their district out of conviction, but often only because political expedience. Of course, there are ways to “vote right” and kill things behind the scenes. Worse, there are ways for a politician to look perfect on paper, yet behind the scenes sabotage the very votes they publicly support. Our most corrupt elected officials commit the most egregious and invisible act: publicly claiming to fight for something, while secretly cutting deals with other voting members behind the scenes to kill it, or worse, giving it mere lip service but expending zero political capital to pass the bill.

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Some people have asked why I’m so agitated about the possibility that Republicans may acquiesce to tax increases as part of the Supercommittee negotiations.

Rather than get into a lengthy discourse about the proper role of the federal government or an analysis of how the Bush-Obama spending binge worsened America’s fiscal situation, I think this chart from a previous post says it all (click to enlarge).

Republicans are considering a surrender on taxes because they are afraid that a deadlock will lead to a sequester, which would mean automatic budget savings. And the sequester, according to these politicians, would “cut” the budget too severely.

But as the chart illustrates, that is utter nonsense.

There are only budget cuts if you use dishonest Washington budget math, which magically turns spending increases into spending cuts simply because the burden of government isn’t expanding faster than it potentially could.

If we use honest math, we can see what this debate is really about. Should we raise taxes so that government spending can grow by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years?

Or should we have a sequester so that the burden of federal spending climbs by “only” $2 trillion?

The fact that this is even an issue tells us a lot about whether the GOP has purged itself of the big-government virus of the Bush years. (more…)

It would be a great tragedy if a super tax hike came out of a supercommittee compromise deal. It would do great harm to the economy — just as much harm as President Obama’s various tax-hike threats. And on the Republican side, a super tax hike would irreparably split the GOP.

Okay. Here’s the good news. In a CNBC interview this week, I asked supercommittee co-chair Jeb Hensarling about an idea of the Democrats to raise taxes by $600 billion to $800 billion. About $300 billion of that might be up-front, with $500 billion later from some tax-reform overhaul. This would be an unmitigated economic disaster.

But Hensarling was blunt: “Not going to happen, Larry.” He said no such deal has been presented to him. And if it were, he and other Republicans on the supercommittee would not support it.

Hensarling then added, “We put $250 billion of what is known as static revenue on the table, but only if we can bring down rates. We believe we can bring the top individual rate down to 28, 29, maybe at most 30 percent, and bring the corporate rate down to the median of the EU, 25 percent.” For emphasis, he said, “We have gone as far as we feel we can go.”

The Texan was referring to the Sen. Pat Toomey plan, which would lower the personal tax rate to 28 percent and head down from there, while at the same time putting limits on personal deductions (such as mortgage interest) for upper-income taxpayers. In other words, flatten the rates and broaden the base.

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As lawyers say, lets stipulate that the political system is broken. We have, in the past, railed against special tax incentives for business that are often outmoded, ill conceived, and are generally ineffective. These, more often than not, merely distort the marketplace at great expense to the taxpayer and the American consumer. Elected officials in Washington have become so locked into doctrinaire philosophical positions that compromise has eluded their reach, and common sense has become as rare as the two-dollar bill. Democrats and the left point to growing gaps between the middle class and those they refer to as millionaires and billionaires (people who earn over $250,000 per annum) and who they say must pay their “fair share” in taxes.

And while it is widely acknowledged that the top 5% of earners pay over 50 percent of federal taxes, there has been a growing concentration of wealth within that top 5% of income earners during the last 20 years. Politicians love to define issues in a debate to gain popular advantage. The country is in desperate need of economic growth, which the Obama Administration has failed effectively to address. So, the White House has made increased taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” the cornerstone of their 2012 election strategy. Excessive spending, the growth of the federal deficit and the accumulated debt of the country threaten to snuff out economic growth in America just as it surely is doing in Europe. When Barack Obama became President, the federal debt was slightly over $10 trillion dollars. It has grown to more than $14 trillion dollars under his watch. If spending is not reined in, and/or revenues do not increase, servicing the nation’s debt will crowd out vital resources for private investment (where new jobs are created).

Elected officials are not leading; they talk past one another. The way out of this mess might be in changing the vocabulary of the debate so both sides can claim a victory. The Democrats could hoist the GOP on their own petard by shifting the debate away from tax increases, to cutting corporate entitlements and benefits. Note that the right complains about spending only when the beneficiaries are those who rely on government to help with retirement payments, medical benefits, or to finance their children’s education. Cutting specified corporate entitlements that really provide no economic benefit to the country would be easier for conservatives to swallow than increasing tax rates, which would retard economic growth.

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Commenting on Supercommittee deliberations last month, I asked whether Republicans will choose the real budgetary savings of a sequester or surrender to a tax hike.

Well, it appears that the GOP likes being known as the Stupid Party and is seriously considering a plan to increase the net tax burden on the American people – even though some of us have warned from the beginning that the left would use the Supercommittee process as an opportunity to trick gullible Republicans into a tax increase.

Here’s the relevant section of an editorial by Steve Moore in this morning’s Wall Street Journal.

…raising rates and raising revenues are different. Eliminating loopholes in exchange for making the Bush tax cuts permanent after 2013 is on the table—and by broadening the tax base, this could bring in tens of billions of new revenues each year. Says Mr. Hensarling: “Republicans want more revenues. We want more revenues by growing the economy; we’re not happy with revenues at 14% of GDP, but we don’t want to do it by raising rates.” One positive development on taxes taking shape is a deal that could include limiting tax deductions, perhaps by capping write-offs on charities, state and local taxes, and mortgage interest payments as a percentage of each tax filer’s gross income.

I’m a bit disappointed that Steve thinks restricting deductions is a “positive development.” I’m a big fan of getting rid of all preferences and distortions in the tax code, but that should only happen if all the revenue is used to finance lower tax rates, not to finance big government.

But that’s a secondary issue.

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Yesterday, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky compared the Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee who voted to subpoena White House documents relating to the Solyndra bankruptcy scandal to “birthers.”

She apparently did not appreciate her collegues’ reasonable demands to see relevant documents pertaining to the White House’s involvement in the scandal.

As could be expected, the congresswoman who never shies away from ad hominem name-calling or metaphorically disparaging anyone who thinks differently than she does, went on the attack again.

The Hill reports:

“I doubt that anything the White House would have agreed to yesterday would have been sufficient. This is a majority that won’t take yes for an answer,” Schakowsky said Thursday ahead of the committee vote.

“And while you are at it why don’t you ask for more documents relating to the place of his birth, or as some members want, his school grades, and why not from kindergarten through law school,”

So Jan believes that elected officials who seek answers relating to a $535-million bad loan, with a trail that goes all the way up to White House, is just as silly as demanding to see the president’s birth certificate?

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From Fox News:

A Republican-led House panel voted Thursday to subpoena the White House for records related to Solyndra, the solar company that collapsed after receiving a $528 million loan.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the resolution 14-9 after Democrats tried to delay the vote during a contentious debate.

Democrats argued the resolution was too broad and gave Chairman Fred Upton too much power. But Republicans said a subpoena was necessary because the White House has denied or delayed requests for thousands of documents related to Solyndra.

Upton, a Michigan Republican, said getting White House documents on Solyndra was like “extracting a tooth without anesthesia” — painful and time-consuming.

The White House immediately slammed the vote, saying it has “cooperated extensively with the committee’s investigation by producing over 85,000 pages of documents, including 20,000 pages produced just yesterday afternoon.”

“And all of the materials that have been disclosed affirm what we said on Day One: this was a merit-based decision made by the Department of Energy,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

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I have sometimes wondered whether it is accurate to say that Republicans are the “Stupid Party.” We’ll soon know the answer to that question. As part of the debt limit agreement, the politicians agreed to set up a “Super Committee” comprised of six Republicans and six Democrats that are responsible for producing at least $1.2 trillion of supposed deficit reduction. But the Democrats appointed a group of hardcore leftists to the super committee, which means that it is virtually impossible to get the necessary seven votes for a good agreement. Indeed, the more relevant question is whether one or more of the Republicans surrenders to a big tax hike.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. The law says that there will be automatic spending reductions if the super committee does not reach an agreement. The political establishment in Washington thinks that this outcome – known as sequestration – would be horrible. They say that a sequester would mean “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts. The only “responsible” approach, we are told, is to go along with a tax increase. This is hogwash. The automatic spending cuts are only “cuts” using Washington’s dishonest budget math. Here’s a chart (click to enlarge) showing how much spending will grow over the next 10 years, and the relatively tiny reduction in budgetary expansion that will be caused if there is a sequester.

We’ve actually been down this path before. There was a small sequester back in the mid-1980s, shortly after the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law was enacted. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the sequestration helped restrain the growth of spending and helped bring about a record amount of deficit reduction in 1987.

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