We look forward to the 2010 elections in the hope that we can decisively reject Barack Obama’s plans to “fundamentally transform the United States.” Here are some questions voters can ask all candidates to help decide whom to vote for.
- Will you vote against all tax increases and new taxes?
- Will you vote to extend all the Republican tax cuts?
- Will you vote to cut federal spending to the pre-bailout level?
- Will you vote to abolish the death tax without passing a new tax (called “carryover basis”) on the sale of inherited property?
- Will you pledge to vote to repeal Obamacare?
- Will you vote for legislation providing that all health plans receiving federal tax benefits include the availability of high-deductible insurance with health savings accounts?
- Will you pledge to enact a government-wide ban on the funding of abortions in any health plan that receives federal benefits?
- Will you pledge to vote against any form of amnesty for illegal aliens?
- Will you vote to cut off funds for the Attorney General to sue to get a judge to knock out Arizona’s popular immigration-enforcement law?
- Will you vote to require employers to use the E-Verify system to verify the Social Security numbers of their employees?
- Will you order the federal government to build the fence on our southern border legislated in the Secure Fence Act of 2006?
- Will you send U.S. troops to our southern border to prevent illegal entry?
- Will you vote for legislation providing that no judge can force the government to communicate with anyone in a language other than English?
- Will you vote for legislation requiring that aliens seeking to enter or remain in the United States must renounce a belief in jihad, sharia, polygamy, child marriage, arranged marriage, “honor” killings, and female genital mutilation?
- Will you vote to prohibit Mexican trucks on U.S. roads?
- Will you vote to stop giving the benefits of U.S. citizenship to babies (“anchor babies”) born to illegal aliens?
- Will you vote for legislation repealing EMTALA (which requires hospitals to provide free medical care to illegal aliens) and limiting Plyler v. Doe (which requires public schools to give a free education to the children of illegal aliens)?
- Will you vote against any bills that exceed the enumerated constitutional powers of Congress?
- Will you vote to prohibit the use of taxpayers’ funds for any activity designed to promote economic or political union with North America or any foreign countries?
- Will you pledge to vote No on increased federal involvement in education?
- Will you urge congressional committee chairmen to hold many public hearings on the grab for legislative powers by supremacist judges, and then take appropriate action to require the judiciary to respect the separation of powers?
- Will you vote to tie federal school appropriations to informed, written parental consent for curricula, surveys, classes or books that may be privacy-invading or offensive to religion or conscience?
- Will you vote to defund Planned Parenthood?
- Will you pledge to vote No on any attempt to repeal DOMA?
- Will you support the right of all fit parents to the care, custody, and control of the upbringing of their children, even if parents are divorced?
- Will you vote No on any effort to revive the so-called Equal Rights Amendment and on any legislation implying that the ERA, which expired in 1982, is still somehow viable?
- Will you vote against repeal of the law that forbids open homosexuals from serving in our military?
- Will you oppose a national Constitutional Convention (known as a Con Con) for any purpose?
- Will you oppose any attempt to bypass the Electoral College by a vote-transfer deceit called National Popular Vote?
- Will you vote against any legislation to pretend that the District of Columbia is a state and entitled to a state’s representation in Congress?
- Will you vote No on any carbon tax or cap-and-trade bill?
- Will you vote to eliminate the ban on our favorite light bulbs?
- Will you vote No on Card Check that eliminates the secret ballot in workers’ elections?
- Will you vote for legislation providing that actions claiming a violation of the Establishment Clause shall not be eligible for an award of attorney’s fees?
Especially for U.S. Senate candidates:
- Will you vote No on the New START Treaty, which would restrict our right to build anti-missile defenses?
- Will you vote No on the UN Law of the Sea Treaty?
- Will you vote No on the UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child?
- Will you vote No on the UN Treaty on Women (known as CEDAW)?
- Will you vote against any judicial nominee who espouses the unconstitutional theories of a “living” or “evolving” Constitution, or an “activist” judiciary?
The more Yes answers to these questions, the more support the candidate deserves.
Republicans Pledge to Change Our Direction
Already tasting victory in November, Republicans in Congress issued “A Pledge to America” setting forth their goals. The principal thrust is to reassure Americans that Republicans will, indeed, offer “a clear and clearly different approach” to Barack Obama’s policies.
The Pledge properly recognizes that “joblessness is the single most important challenge facing America today” and that, therefore, it’s time to end the “liberal Keynesian experiment,” i.e., trying to spend our way to prosperity. We’ve been waiting for smart politicians to make a forthright denunciation of Keynesianism ever since it was originally inflicted on Americans by Franklin D. Roosevelt and then given political credence by Richard Nixon’s famous comment (proving he was not a conservative): “we are all Keynesians now.”
Republicans solemnly promise not to allow any tax increases. Unless the Reid-Pelosi Democrats come to their senses, they will allow a $3.8 trillion tax hike to take effect the first of the year.
The Pledge rejects Obama’s “job-killing agenda”: bailouts, government takeovers, tax increases, phony “stimulus” spending sprees, and the new regulation on small business to report to IRS any purchases of more than $600. The Pledge recognizes that raising taxes is the wrong way to go because it punishes the very people who can hire the unemployed.
Another very sensible pledge is to “roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.” We surely need Congressmen who will call a halt to the present policy of borrowing from China and other foreign countries 41 cents of every dollar we spend.
Here is a very innovative idea: Republicans pledge to stop “forcing responsible taxpayers to subsidize irresponsible behavior.” This is scheduled to start by “ending bailouts permanently, canceling the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” We hope this policy will continue by refusing to bail out or subsidize any more banks that give home mortgages to people who have no job or credit.
Republicans promise “to repeal and replace the government takeover of health care.” Current public opinion polls confirm that 61% of the voters want exactly that. Republican remedies for health-care problems include enacting medical liability reform, allowing freedom to buy insurance from states other than your own, and making it easier to have health savings accounts. Since Obamacare provides for the creation of more than 160 boards, bureaus, and commissions, the only way to deal with such a maze of bureaucracies is to repeal Obamacare and start over.
Contrary to predictions and hopes of the RINOs, the Pledge takes firm positions on the social issues. The pledge “to honor families, traditional marriage, life and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values” starkly delineates a fundamental divide between the political parties.
Traditional marriage? Republicans are four-square to maintain it. Obama, on the other hand, has called for the repeal of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act). The Pledge promises to prevent the marriage penalty from returning.
Life? Republicans pledge to “establish a government-wide prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion and subsidies for insurance coverage that includes abortion.” They also will “codify the Hyde Amendment” and repudiate Obama’s sham in trying to finesse abortion funding in Obamacare by a meaningless executive order. The other party is very different on the abortion issue. Obama has pledged to pass the Freedom of Choice Act, which would pay for all abortions with taxpayers’ money and knock out all pro-life laws (such as the ban on partial-birth abortions and requiring parental consent for minors’ abortions).
Democratic-appointed judges are repeatedly ruling against any public manifestation of religion such as posting the Ten Commandments or reciting “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Obama has lined up in favor of building a massive Mosque near the 9/11 site in New York.
When Obama publicly read portions of the Declaration of Independence on television, he ostentatiously omitted the key words “by our Creator.” His failure to read the Declaration accurately means that he refused to identify Who endowed us with our rights.
In another switch from current policy, Republicans pledge to enforce our laws to secure our border: “We will reaffirm the authority of state and local law enforcement to assist in the enforcement of all federal immigration laws.”
Tackling another controversial issue, Republicans pledge to oppose a national ‘cap and trade’ energy tax. And Republicans will fight for the rights of workers by opposing schemes that deny them the right to a secret ballot.
The Pledge recognizes that providing for the common defense is not just a priority, “it is a constitutional duty.” Therefore, Republicans pledge to protect the U.S. homeland from missile threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.
Bloomberg Wants To Be a Kingmaker
New York City’s billionaire Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has decided he wants to be a political kingmaker using his own deep pockets plus his rich friends. He’s unhappy about the remarkable success of the Tea Partiers in nominating conservative candidates, and he wants to remake the Republican Party under the label Moderate. He is famous for getting the New York City Council to allow him to run for a third term as Mayor, despite the city’s two-term limit. He won with only 51% despite spending a ridiculous $185 per vote.
Bloomberg’s first foray into this venture is to host a fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. That alone should disqualify him from respectability in the Republican Party.
Other Democrats Bloomberg is endorsing include the candidates for Colorado Governor and Senator, John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet. Bloomberg says his idea of how the Senate should function is the 40-year collaboration of the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
Bloomberg plans to finance candidates who agree with him in supporting abortion, same-sex marriage, suffocating gun control, and amnesty for illegal aliens, but keep silent about the social issues in the hope that voters won’t notice these candidates’ rejection of conservative principles. But the Ronald Reagan model for victory requires a coalition of active fiscal, national defense, and social conservatives, and Republicans will be losers if they don’t stick to that winning formula. Candidates in 2010 cannot fail to address and answer questions about the social issues decided by judges this year.
One major social issue is support of marriage as one man and one woman, which is defined in 31 states by vote of the people, plus the federal law (Defense of Marriage Act: DOMA). Supremacist judges have been overriding the will of the people on marriage. Although a majority of Californians passed a citizen initiative outlawing same-sex marriage, on August 4 a federal judge knocked this out, saying Prop 8 is unconstitutional. On July 8, another federal judge declared that DOMA’s one-man-one-woman definition of marriage is unconstitutional. On July 15, the D.C. Court of Appeals approved same-sex marriage, writing that it would somehow violate “human rights” to allow D.C. residents to make the final decision through a citizen initiative.
Immigration is another social issue where decision-making power is being taken away from the people and assumed by supremacist judges. On July 28 a federal judge proclaimed that Arizona cannot enforce its new law passed to enforce existing laws about illegal aliens. The judge thus overrode the will of the big majority of Americans who not only support the Arizona law but want their own state to pass a law just like it. On September 9, a federal appellate court ruled against the Hazleton, PA city ordinance that required landlords to rent only to legal residents and employers to hire only legal residents.
On July 14, a federal judge stopped enforcement of a Nebraska law (passed by the unicameral legislature 44 to 5) establishing that abortionists should inform women about health risks (such as breast cancer). Abortion is a very live social issue now that polls show the majority of Americans believe abortion is wrong.
On September 9 a federal judge grabbed away from our elected representatives in Congress the military rule known as “Don’t ask don’t tell,” calling it unconstitutional.
The fiscal conservatives who argue that only money issues should be part of political debate should face the reality that social issues are the chief purpose of Obama’s big-spending bills. The decline in marriage and the increase in illegitimate births (41% of all U.S. births last year) are the principal cause of the growth of the welfare state. Federal taxpayers are now providing some or all the living expenses for 40% of Americans through means-tested handouts, mostly to the unmarried. This is the actuality of Barack Obama’s boast to Joe the Plumber to spread the wealth around.
The Obama Democrats know which side their bread is buttered on: 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama in 2008, and Obama’s strategists want to increase that number. They even put a marriage penalty in Obamacare. There is no way to cut the current fiscal havoc unless we reduce the handouts of taxpayers’ money caused by social issues and cut taxes on small businesses so they can create more jobs. Remember Ronald Reagan’s maxim: if you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it; if you tax it, you’ll get less of it.
Time to START Standing Up for America
Among the dangers lurking in Congress’s fall session and Lame Duck Session will be Obama’s demand that the Senate rush to ratify the treaty called New START, which Obama signed with the Russians in Prague last April. This treaty is not only a bad idea; it’s downright dangerous to U.S. national security.
For the first time in the long record of U.S.-Russian treaties, New START links offensive and defensive weapons. Obama’s advocates of ratification say that doesn’t matter because the link is only in the preamble and that doesn’t bind us. But this interpretation hasn’t been cleared with the Russians, who assert that the preamble puts a binding limit on the U.S. missile defense program. The Russian government issued a statement that the New START treaty “can operate and be viable only if the United States refrains from developing its missile defense capabilities quantitatively or qualitatively.”
The Russians are salivating at the thought that New START proclaims their victory in their long-running battle to kill U.S. missile defenses. For decades, Russia’s primary goal was to stop the United States from building any anti-missile capability. Ronald Reagan’s adamant refusal to give up his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was the principal reason he won the Cold War (without firing a shot, as Margaret Thatcher said). But now Barack Obama is casually willing to abandon our right to build defensive weapons.
Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) accurately warns that New START revives the Cold War policy known as MAD, a label that famously served as a double entendre. The acronym stands for Mutual Assured Destruction, the policy that was supposed to deter nuclear attack because of the threat that the United States was committed to retaliate and dump massive destruction on the Soviet Union.
In the years of the Cold War, we assumed we were dealing with a rational enemy who, even though dedicated to world conquest, dared not risk such devastating retaliation. That may not be true of today’s potential adversaries, who have trained their younger generation to believe that suicide is noble and their key to Heaven.
New START doesn’t make nukes obsolete; it just tries to ensure that the U.S. and Russia have an equal capacity to destroy each other. Most important, New START does nothing whatever to protect us from a nuclear Iran or North Korea or Syria or even China.
New START bars the U.S. and Russia from deploying more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers. To achieve that goal, we will have to destroy some of our missiles and not modernize the ones we keep because the treaty locks us into a permanent comprehensive nuclear test ban.
The State Department admits that Russia has consistently cheated on all its arms-control treaties including the 1991 START I treaty right up until it expired last December. Russia admits that it cheated on the famous 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, from which President George W. Bush finally (and thankfully) withdrew the United States.
U.S. intelligence analysts have raised questions about whether Russian cheating can even be detected. A State Department report claims that potential Russian cheating on the New START nuclear-arms treaty would not be significant because the benefits of cheating would be “questionable.” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said, we’re all wasting a lot of time if the State Department admits that Russia has consistently cheated on all arms-control treaties as a matter of course and that cheating doesn’t matter anyway. McCain believes that cheating does matter.
Another provision where the New START treaty favors Russia is that it fails to limit Russia’s massive tactical nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield. They outnumber U.S. tactical nukes by a ratio of 10 to 1, and can be launched from rockets, submarines and bomber planes.
The New START treaty is based on Obama’s foolish notion that the United States can create “a world without nuclear weapons.” We have power only to create a world without American nuclear weapons, a condition that would make us a sitting duck for countries that have evil nuclear objectives.
The New START treaty is a big victory for Russia and defeat for the United States. The Senate should reject it.
