Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, February 19, 2016
Conservatives Must Not Squander This Opportunity
As a supporter of Ted Cruz I have had many supporters of other candidates tell me that he would not be electable in the general election. I disagree. Yes, Cruz is caricatured in social media and elsewhere as unlikable and as one who doesn't play well with others. He's too extreme and we need someone who can draw independents to win, and, once elected, unite us in bipartisan action. He just isn't as handsome as Rubio, they say. Yet I have seen polls showing that Cruz is the most well-liked candidate among Republican voters, so you can't always rely on anecdotal evidence — or expert commentary. The reason is that we all have a tendency to project our own feelings on to the general population.
Supreme Chaos
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia is creating chaos on Capitol Hill. [Yesterday's] Washington Post reports, "Senate Republicans clashed Wednesday over how to battle President Obama's expected Supreme Court nomination." In addition, the White House is refusing to rule out a recess appointment. If Obama makes a recess appointment, the Republican leadership will have no one to blame but itself. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, backed up by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, has full authority to decide when or if the Senate goes into recess. By the way, Senate Democrats once went on the record in opposition to recess appointments of Supreme Court justices.
Our Foreign Policy Problems Go Well Beyond Iraq
We get it already. The Iraq war was a mistake. Indeed, on this point pretty much everyone agrees. Jeb Bush, the brother of the president who launched the war, has said so. So has Hillary Clinton, the only presidential candidate in either party to have actually voted to invade Iraq (though she refused to admit her vote was a mistake until fairly recently). The only disagreements on the Republican side are about the degree and nature of the mistake. Catch Donald Trump in a glandular moment and he'll say that George W. Bush knowingly sent thousands of Americans to their deaths based on a lie. Ask Trump when he's in a more mature mood — or when he gets bad press for his slanders — and he'll say he doesn't know whether it was a lie.
Win One for Nino
Let's understand something about the fight to fill the Supreme Court seat of Antonin ("Nino") Scalia. This is about nothing but raw power. Any appeal you hear to high principle is phony — brazenly, embarrassingly so. In Year Seven of the George W. Bush administration, Sen. Chuck Schumer publicly opposed filling any Supreme Court vacancy until Bush left office. ("Except in extraordinary circumstances." None such arose. Surprise!) Today he piously denounces Republicans for doing exactly the same for a vacancy created in Year Eight of Barack Obama.
You Will Be Made to Care
I have a new book out this week titled "You Will Be Made to Care." I chronicle the disturbing trend of persecution in the United States against people of faith. Several years ago, I had an encounter with a young man who told me in no uncertain terms that he did not care about the rapid movement to legalize same sex marriage in the United States. It did not affect him, would not affect him and he did not care about the issue at all. I replied to him that he would be made to care by the secular left in America. They will abide no dissent on the issue. If he decides, because of his faith, that same sex marriage is a sin, he will be made to change his mind or shut up. He could lose his job, his home, and see his career annihilated if he cared the wrong way. Sadly, since that time, I have been proven right.
Republican Self-Sabotage
The latest CBS poll suggests that the Donald Trump juggernaut continues to roll, with 35 percent of Republicans supporting him. Ted Cruz, his nearest rival, garners 18 percent. Jeb Bush, the candidate who should have been the obvious choice if conventional wisdom about money and politics was even remotely true, is dead last with 4 percent. In vain does Ted Cruz protest that Donald Trump is not a conservative. Among those who describe themselves as "very conservative," 35 percent favor Trump, versus 30 percent for Cruz and 12 percent for Rubio.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Donald Trump on Bush's WMD 'Lie'
"George Bush made a mistake," said Donald Trump in the South Carolina debate last week. "We should have never been in Iraq." Trump added that "we destabilized" the larger Middle East. Those are legitimate points of contention — though Trump should not exclude President Obama's decision to premature pull troops from Iraq. That move by Obama in 2011 was disastrous, as so many (including Bush himself) warned it would be. It unquestionably helped enable the surge of ISIS and its establishment of a self-proclaimed "Islamic State" caliphate. But then Donald Trump went way overboard.
Republicans Need to Stop Acting the Fool
After watching the mayhem at last week's GOP presidential debate, I've decided it's time for the Republican candidates to have a Come-to-Jesus meeting. Guys, we get it. Donald, you can't take a punch. Ted, you think you're smarter than everybody else. Marco, you love to flip flop. Jeb, you're a Bush. We get it. So how about dropping the personal insults and start talking about the issues — like looking out for the American working man?
Party of Reagan or Party of Trump?
The Republican food fight last weekend was a horrible embarrassment for the Republican Party. With their childish attacks on each other, and with Donald Trump's nasty bullying, they made the Party of Lincoln and the Party of Reagan look like the Party of Brats. Only Ben Carson and John Kasich acted like adults. Kasich was absolutely right when he asked why the Republican Party's 2016 candidates for president were squabbling about arcane pieces of legislation that didn't pass the Senate.
Facts Trump Spin on Planned Parenthood
They say there's no such thing as bad press — but what about bad praise? GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump seems to be testing that theory after Planned Parenthood applauded him for what the group considers a more moderate approach to abortion. Back in August, Cecile Richards's group cast plenty of doubt on Donald's pro-life credibility when they applauded his position as a reasonable one.
Crushing the American Dream
In all the huge headlines of recent days, an event took place in Indianapolis that went largely unnoticed here in Washington, D.C., and in many other places. But it was a big deal to the 2,100 men and women and their families who were directly affected. Carrier, the air conditioning manufacturer and a division of United Technologies, called its workers into a meeting to announce that two plants were being shuttered and their jobs were being sent to Mexico.
Much Ado About Nothing Budget
President Obama recently released his last budget, laying out his priorities and proposals for FY2017 and the years to come. Not surprisingly, it's a tax-and-spend budget that not only does nothing to get us off the unsustainable financial path we're on, but also it claims that more taxes and spending will grow the economy. According to Congressional Quarterly, the president's budget should be called the "Do Nothing Budget." It's a good name, if we consider that it doesn't do anything to address the explosion of the debt and the growth in spending for Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act subsidies and Social Security.
Hillary the Inevitable and Ethelred the Unready
Recall if you will those unforgettable royal figures from yesteryear with their peculiar cognomens. Some of my favorites are Ethelred the Unready, a famously tardy English king from the Middle Ages. Or how about Charles the Bald, the Holy Roman Emperor whose glabrous head was widely remarked in his time and still is to this very day? And who can forget Pepin the Short? Even standing on his tiptoes he was the diminutive King of the Franks.
Trump: Bush Administration Knowingly 'Lied' About Iraq War Intel
It's one thing to disagree with the decision to go to war in Iraq. That, believe it or not, was once a (SET ITAL) minority (END ITAL) view. According to a Gallup poll taken in March 2003, the night after the Iraq war began, 76 percent supported President George W. Bush's decision. Two months after the invasion, a Gallup poll found 79 percent of Americans thought the war was justified — about half of those said, "The war will be justified regardless of whether (weapons of mass destruction) are found." But in the last GOP debate, Republican candidate front-runner Donald Trump took things to a new level. He not only called the decision to go to war "a big, fat mistake" (and, post-debate, proclaimed it "a disaster") but also said: "They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none."
The Return of Appeasement, Collaboration and Isolationism
World War II broke out when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. A once preventable war had become inevitable — and would soon become global — due to three fatal decisions. Most infamously, the Western European democracies had appeased Hitler during the late 1930s in hopes that he would quit gobbling up his neighbors. Unfortunately, the Nazis considered Western appeasement as weakness to be manipulated rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated. After the bloodless annexation of Austria and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Hitler assumed that Britain and France would not go to war at all if he went into Poland. Or, if they did, that they would not fight very seriously.
Antonin Scalia's Successor
Few people in modern history have fulfilled their oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution" more than the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia was so well respected that the Senate voted 98-0 in 1986 to confirm him. These days it would be difficult to get a unanimous vote in support of Mother's Day. It doesn't take a fortune teller to predict the scenario that would present itself if the political dynamics were reversed and a Republican president were in the White House with a Democratic Senate majority. Democrats would be demanding no justice be confirmed until the next president takes office and they would make it a major campaign issue. That is what Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said in 2007: "We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances." That was 19 months before the 2008 election. It is a little more than eight months away from the next election.
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
Election 2016: The Most Critical One of Your Lifetime?
Cruz, Trump, Rubio, Carson, Bush, Kasich? What's a conservative to do? Who is the right pick? How can one determine which politician to trust? As I've thought about, studied and researched each of these candidates, I've certainly seen strengths and weaknesses in all of them. But at the end of the day, you and I can only pick one for our preferred nominee (assuming you've already ruled out the two socialists in the other party). So what is the best way to winnow out the candidates who are either not who they say they are or are ill-equipped to lead our nation back to our founding principles?
Next President, Not Obama, Should Pick Scalia’s Successor
The unfortunate passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has opened a vacancy on our nation's highest court. Whoever fills that vacancy, the American people deserve a nominee chosen by the next president, not by an administration with one foot out the door. The Constitution is very clear that the president has the power to nominate new members of the Supreme Court, "with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." There is broad agreement among constitutional scholars that our elected representatives in Congress can say "no" if they choose. They don't have to rubber-stamp new judges.
Block an Obama Nomination
According to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the future of the republic teeters in the balance. Unless the United States Senate bows to the will of President Barack Obama and approves his replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, everything we hold dear will be lost. A refusal to get with the program, Warren insists, "would threaten both the Constitution and our democracy itself. It would also prove that all the Republican talk about loving the Constitution is just that — empty talk."
Clinton and Her Aides Circulated Classified Info Using Non-Government Email
When she was asked at a recent "debate" if she was concerned about the FBI investigation into her email practices, Hillary Clinton told debate moderators she "is 100 percent confident" nothing will come of the investigation. Of course, what else could she say? "I'm almost certain nothing will come of the criminal investigation?"