Our Task: Educate Grassroots & Leaders
Political Parties Need Rebranding & New Leadership
Dozens of explanations have been offered by people who think they are savvy about politics to explain why Mitt Romney lost and Barack Obama was reelected despite his many unlawful actions and the high unemployment figures. My view is that the two major political parties need rebranding and new leadership.
Obama’s massive negative TV advertising rather successfully branded Romney and the Republican Party as rich guys who can’t empathize with ordinary hard-working Americans. In fact, Obama grew up enjoying a pampered lifestyle attending elite schools and colleges he didn’t pay for, and now is rich, too, with his wealth and lifestyle coming from the taxpayers.
Nevertheless, when the pollsters asked the question, “Who is more in touch with people like you?” Romney lost to Obama by ten points. Why is it that Romney didn’t seem to relate to middle-class Americans? We can’t blame only Romney’s country-club persona for the psychological barrier between him and the bloc of middle-class Americans whose votes he lost. We must also blame the Republican CEOs’ devotion to policies that allowed, even encouraged, several million well-paying manufacturing jobs to go overseas, leaving behind empty buildings in crucial swing states.
Romney didn’t have a message for those Americans, nor did Republican Senate candidates, nor did the Republican Party. So the people who were an essential part of Ronald Reagan’s spectacular victories returned to the Democratic Party, assuming that Republicans care more about their devotion to so-called “free trade” with cheating Communist countries than to protecting good American jobs and a strong American manufacturing base.
You would think that Romney and the Republican Party would have learned a lesson from the insensitive way John McCain brushed off the suffering of those whose good jobs were moving overseas. McCain went to Detroit and callously said in debate: Those jobs are gone forever; just go to a community college and get retrained.
The basic Romney-Republican economic message was cutting taxes and regulations to enable people to prosper as entrepreneurs, innovators, and employers. That’s fine, but it doesn’t relate to the millions of men who lost $50,000 jobs and then had to take minimum-wage or part-time jobs that don’t pay enough to support a family.
Romney and Republicans also lost the votes of the Millennial generation, some of whom were turned off by our meddling nation-building in faraway lands. Other votes of Americans that should have gone to Republicans were lost because the RINO (Republicans in Name Only) Establishment, rather than grassroots Republicans, selected the wrong candidate and dictated wrong policies. Insulting the Libertarians, such as by not allowing the Ron Paul delegates to have their Convention votes recorded, was a crucial mistake, and the small Libertarian vote in some states probably was the margin of defeat of several Republican Senate candidates.
While Republicans were proclaiming that 2012 was the most important election of our lifetime, 5 million fewer Americans than in 2008 voted either for the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate. Maybe they decided there isn’t any difference between the two major parties, and on the crucial economic issue of loss of good middle-class jobs, there apparently isn’t.
The Republican Party doesn’t need only a change in marketing. It also needs a change in policies in order to respect the jobs of middle-class Americans and the choices of grassroots Republicans.
It’s time to change Republican economic policy so the Party can be rebranded as the party of family, good jobs, and superior weaponry that keeps America safe without war. Safe without war and Reagan-style peace through strength can help to win back thousands of non-voters.
The leaks coming out of the RINO Establishment (which made so many 2012 mistakes) now impudently try to instruct Republicans whom they want as representatives: (1) let the RINOs select Republican primary nominees instead of letting grassroots voters decide who they want to represent them, and (2) blame the defeat on those who talk about social issues. Let’s remember that it was grassroots Republicans, not the Establishment, that chose winners Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
The Republican Establishment is also trying to make us believe that Republicans can win by offering amnesty to illegal aliens. That’s a deadend road that translates into more Democratic, not Republican, votes.
The Democratic Party should be rebranded as the Party of atheism, amnesty, abortion, and debt. For confirmation of those goals, just read the Democratic Party Platform adopted this year in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Voters should watch again that portion of the Democratic National Convention when a voice vote was taken three times on including a reference to God in the Democratic Party Platform, and three times at least half the Delegates loudly shouted No. Barack Obama confirmed the Democratic Party’s rejection of God in his 2012 Thanksgiving Day address. For the fourth straight year, he omitted thanking God, merely reminding us to thank “each other.”
There’s plenty of hope for the Republican Party because 30 of the 50 governors are Republican, 24 states are completely under Republican control, and Republicans still have the majority of the House of Representatives. It’s time for grassroots Republicans, with the help of our Tea Party allies, to take control of their Party and set it on a winning path.
Beware: Amnesty Won’t Elect Republicans
The Republican strategists who confidently predicted that their candidate, Mitt Romney, would win the 2012 election are already pontificating about what Republicans must do to win in 2016. After their disastrous defeat, strategy and policy mistakes, and expensive super PAC advertising that failed to win votes, why should anybody take their advice again?
The elitists now tell us that amnesty for illegal aliens, a.k.a. “immigration reform,” is the key to future Republican nirvana. That’s wrong-headed advice.
Barack Obama sealed his victory in the battleground states: Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, and New Hampshire, but those states have very few Hispanics, and illegal immigration was not a significant issue. Obama won narrowly in Florida, another battleground state, but the Hispanic vote there is Cuban and Puerto Rican and they don’t care about immigration laws.
Most polls show that Romney’s pro-enforcement policies were more popular than Obama’s pro-amnesty views. Let’s look at some numbers.
In regard to the entry of illegal aliens, a CBS poll in August found that 63% of voters believed that Arizona’s immigration enforcement laws are either “about right” or “didn’t go far enough.” This was confirmed by a Breitbart News election-night poll reporting that 61% of voters favored Arizona-style immigration laws, including 63% of independents, 53% of blacks, and even 40% of Democrats.
The notion that the main reason Hispanics vote Democratic is their support of amnesty for illegal aliens and their resentment against Republicans who oppose it is a big political lie. The reason Hispanics vote Democratic is that two-thirds of Mexican immigrant families, although they are hard workers, are in or near poverty and 57% use at least one welfare program, which is twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households.
That’s not a constituency for whom promises of amnesty for more poor immigrants would persuade them to vote for the Party that is branded as supporting tax cuts for the rich, limited government, and spending reductions. Nor does it mean that Hispanics are a voting bloc eager to vote for a white Cuban, Marco Rubio, instead of the Party that is offering them cash, health care, and other benefits.
The elitists are trying to wrap their fallacious argument in Ronald Reagan, but that won’t wash. Reagan was persuaded to sign a major amnesty bill for the then-illegal aliens, but it’s well known that the resultant amnesty was rife with fraud and did not produce Republican votes.
In Reagan’s 1980 victory, he received 35% of the Latino vote, and in his landslide of 1984 he received 37%. After Reagan’s generous 1986 amnesty, George H.W. Bush’s 1988 victory produced only 30% of the Latino vote.
Another myth about Hispanic voters is the notion that social issues will get them to vote Republican because they are Christian and pro-family. The Hispanic illegitimacy birth rate is 53%, about twice that of whites, and a Pew Research Center poll now reports that the majority of Hispanics support gay marriage.
An American National Elections Study asked a question about free market vs. government solutions. Only 17.9% of Hispanics responded “the less government the better,” and 83.3% said a strong government involvement is required to handle economic problems.
The pro-amnesty crowd waged an expensive campaign this year to defeat the famous Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, but he nevertheless won his reelection. He said he wants to talk “man to man” with Obama and explain that granting amnesty to illegal aliens is unfair to legal immigrants.
Policymakers should read the studies by Cuban exile scholar Jose Azel that probe into Hispanic attitudes and history. He concludes that the sociopolitical heritage from Spain and the post-colonial experience of Latin America have led Latinos to view government very differently from the principles of limited government enunciated and adopted by our Founding Fathers.
There isn’t any real evidence of Mexican assimilation to parallel the Irish and Italian assimilation in the 20th century. Irish and Italian assimilation absolutely depended on stopping the entry of more new foreigners, as the United States did in the 1920s.
The voting bloc that Mitt Romney ignored, but which Republicans must recapture if they ever want to win again, is the blue-collar men without a college degree who had well-paid manufacturing jobs until the free traders shipped those jobs overseas. They used to be called Reagan Democrats and they were an essential part of the big victories won by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Republicans need a new strategy to recapture those good middle-class jobs. We don’t need them merely for Republican votes; we need them also to restore our manufacturing capacity for economic, national security, and family-support reasons.
ObamaCare Battle Isn’t Over Yet
Those who thought ObamaCare was set in concrete by Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision last June have discovered that states have the option of whether or not they will create a health insurance exchange, which is the key to participating in the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Obama’s belief that the public would warm up to his signature legislation once it became the law of the land has proven false. The current Kaiser Family Foundation poll reports that only 38% of the public approves of ObamaCare.
Sixteen states, including Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio and Missouri, have given notice to the federal government that they are refusing to set up a health exchange, which means it falls to the federal government to set up exchanges for those states. Only 17 states have committed to set up a health exchange as ObamaCare expected, while the other states are still wrestling with their decision. Republicans and Tea Parties are encouraging them not to set up an exchange.
Among the good reasons for states to say No is that an exchange would cost each state between $10 million and $100 million a year, and that would require unwelcome tax increases. Ohio estimates that setting up its exchange will cost $63 million plus $43 million to run annually.
A state-created exchange provides a mechanism for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to impose one-size-fits-all rules on insurance products sold in the state. It also makes it easier for the federal government to regulate individuals and businesses in that state, collecting fines and taxes from some in order to give subsidies to others. Nevertheless, you can be sure that the blame will fall on state officials when ObamaCare increases insurance premiums and denies care to the elderly.
State-created exchanges will bring us higher taxes, fewer jobs, and fewer doctors and health care providers. To add insult to injury, ObamaCare’s mandates will drastically infringe on our religious freedom.
If enough states refuse to create a federally controlled exchange, that will give the federal government the go-ahead to take on the task of building the exchanges. The feds would then have to figure out who is eligible and for what, a calculation that requires ascertaining family income, the number of family members, and who may be eligible for different levels of benefits.
One positive effect of states’ refusal to set up exchanges is that this might be a good way to reduce federal spending and debt. If all states declined, it is estimated that the federal deficit could be reduced by about $700 billion over ten years.
Can the federal government, big as it is, cope with this task? It can’t be easy, and it could take at least two or three years to build the technology since they are starting with Medicaid’s 1980s technology.
Another way states can throw a roadblock in ObamaCare and also reduce their own spending is by making a second decision not to sign on to ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid. The Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision assured the states of their right to say No to participation in this Medicaid expansion.
Medicaid costs are already bankrupting state governments and increasing costs of private insurance. At the same time, Medicaid payments for services rendered are so low that patients have trouble finding physicians and other health providers who will accept them.
It’s been estimated that ObamaCare’s Medicaid provision could cost the states as much as $53 billion over the first ten years, and neither the states nor the federal government has the money to expand Medicaid. Medicaid is already layered with waste and fraud, plus the failure to convince us that it is a cost-effective way to deliver health care.
ObamaCare is a massive and costly double-barreled entitlement expansion. Overnight, ObamaCare will add 30 million people to the government’s entitlement rolls, an overwhelming task even for the Obama Administration.
Tell your state legislators to reject their state’s health-insurance exchange and also to reject an expansion of Medicaid. We simply cannot afford either liberal boondoggle.
The esteemed commentator Thomas Sowell said it best: “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication AND a government bureaucracy to administer it.” It doesn’t make sense.
Good Advice from Ronald Reagan
Be of good cheer. We can save America from Obama’s rush to Socialism. Here is still-valid advice from Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1975 Conservative Political Action Conference:
We have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted, but by those who stayed home. . . .
It is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any Democratic Party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. . . . Bureaucracy was assailed and fiscal responsibility hailed. . . . Make no mistake, the leadership of the Democratic Party is still out of step with the majority of Americans. . .
I don’t know about you, but I am impatient with those Republicans who after the last election rushed into print saying, “We must broaden the base of our Party” — when what they meant was to fuzz up and blur even more the differences between ourselves and our opponents. . . .
Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?
Let us show that we stand for fiscal integrity and sound money and above all for an end to deficit spending, with ultimate retirement of the national debt. Let us also include a permanent limit on the percentage of people’s earnings government can take without their consent. . . . Let us explore ways to ward off Socialism. . . .
A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply to swell its numbers. . . .
It is time to reassert that principle and raise it to full view. And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way.
Hope for the Future
If Republicans want to win future elections, they will have to field candidates who confidently defend U.S. jobs, the U.S. Constitution, American exceptionalism, parents’ rights in education, traditional marriage, and the sanctity of human life.
The conservative movement was built by local study groups in the 1960s. Those study groups built a grassroots constituency that defined conservatism and taught it to those who sought to be elected our representatives. The grassroots were then ready to choose and elect Ronald Reagan.
Conservatives today should not waste time speculating about who they will support for President in 2016. Instead we should build a powerful grassroots movement that trains leaders on every level of government to articulate authentic, pro-American conservative principles. Then we will be in position to name our nominee.
Republican conservatives have recovered again and again after various elitists led us down the road to defeat with candidates who were aptly described as “me too” or “moderates” in aping the liberals, especially in policies supporting big government, globalism, and internationalism.
The State of Kansas has given us a stunning example of how conservatives can retake our Party. Kansas is a very red state, but RINO Republicans have long controlled the legislature and blocked conservative legislation. In the 2012 Kansas Republican Primary, conservatives won an overwhelming victory, taking over the State Senate by defeating eight long-serving, powerful RINOs.
As a result of the 2010 and 2012 elections, 24 states are now controlled by Republicans. That gives us a great opportunity to pass laws that will stop vote fraud in future elections. Conservatives, let’s get to work!
