Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Listen Up, Republicans!
Because I do my level best to avoid liberals, most of the political arguments I get into are with my fellow conservatives. As a rule, it comes down to my being willing to vote for any Republican on the general ballot. In the primaries, I will always favor the one furthest to the right. But if he or she loses, I will vote for the last Republican standing. The folks I argue with are the ones who would rather sit out an election than vote for a Republican who fails the litmus test. It does no good to point out that even Reagan wouldn't be able to pass the test in 2013. After all, he raised our state taxes twice when he was governor, and even signed the most liberal abortion bill in America. As president, when amnesty was still merely a glint in John McCain's eye, Reagan, who made such a big thing out of trusting but verifying when dealing with the Soviet Union, turned into a flounder, and fell, hook, line and sinker, for the bait when the Democrats swore to shut down the border.
From The Comedy Store
Vladimir Putin wrote a New York Times opinion piece in which he scolded Americans for thinking the U.S. is an exceptional nation. It proves he knows nothing about this country. Americans don't read anything longer than one hundred and forty characters.
Friday, September 20, 2013
Conviction and Forgiveness
It was just 52 seconds, but what happened on the morning of August 15, 2012 changed FRC forever. Were it not for an ordinary man showing extraordinary courage, an activist bent on massacring an office of innocent people might have succeeded in silencing dozens of the FRC team -- forever. Today, that man, Floyd Lee Corkins II, was held accountable in a court of law for his premeditated act of violence. As prosecutors pointed out, this was no ordinary attack -- but an act intended to intimidate and bully an organization that represents millions of pro-marriage Americans. While rows of his intended targets looked on, the man who methodically planned to take FRC lives was sentenced to 25 years in prison for [three felony counts](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323808204579085570850963240.html), including the first-ever domestic terrorism conviction in the nation's capital.
A Skilled White House, Aggressively on Message
President Barack Obama, fresh from having his lunch money taken from him by Russia's Vladimir Putin, is flailing about trying to find someone he can shift the public's attention to. He has chosen House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) as the person and the upcoming end of the U.S. government's fiscal year on September 30 as his verbal weapon. I think that is the wrong fight against the wrong guy.
Let Obamacare Fail on Its Own
The conservative push to defund Obamacare has no chance of succeeding as long as Democrats have a majority in the Senate. So why risk alienating voters? The tactics the House leadership has now endorsed may rev up the hard-core base of the GOP, but it could mean election losses next year. That's the conclusion Karl Rove has reached, according to an op-ed he penned for The Wall Street Journal this week. According to polls his organization conducted, the GOP loses independent voters on the issue of a government shutdown. Rove argues, correctly, that "any strategy to repeal, delay or replace the law must have a credible chance of succeeding or affecting broad public opinion positively. The defunding strategy doesn't. Going down that road would strengthen the president while alienating independents. It is an ill-conceived tactic, and Republicans should reject it."
Newtown Amnesia in Hollywood
After the Newtown school shooting, commentators on the Left expressed outrage that gun-rights groups were exploiting the attack to build membership in the wake of all the liberal demands for a federal crackdown on gun owners. Nine months later, they're curiously silent as Rupert Murdoch's cable network FX milks a fictional Catholic-school shooting for commercial gain. The Sept. 10 premiere of the violent motorcycle gang drama "Sons of Anarchy" featured the school shooting, as well as two rapes and a man drowning in a bathtub of urine. Then the show's creator Kurt Sutter made a complete fool of himself, claiming "We didn't do it for shock."
Is This Still the America We Thought We Knew?
The fascinating issue of America's character arose in a "Ricochet Podcast" featuring the sagacious Norman Podhoretz. Hosts Peter Robinson, Rob Long and James Lileks interviewed Podhoretz on a range of issues, but primarily American foreign policy. Long lamented that President Obama has been making a consummate mess of America's foreign policy, most recently in Syria, yet polls don't seem to reflect that Americans are as atuned to Obama's incompetence as one might expect -- and hope. Nor do Americans seem to be bothered by Russian President Vladimir Putin's denunciation of the United States in an op-ed for The New York Times.
Jeb Bush's Latest Common Core Snit Fit
This is priceless. Former Fla. GOP Gov. Jeb Bush, consummate politician and 2016 presidential aspirant, has now bitterly accused opponents of his federal education schemes of possessing "purely political" motives. Projection, anyone? Having previously suggested that critics of the so-called Common Core standards program are crazy, ignorant and lying, Bush piled on at a National Press Club appearance this week. Jeb the Insult Comic Dog did not hold back. Not only is the growing anti-Fed Ed movement of parents, teachers, school board members, academics, privacy advocates and state legislators of all stripes "purely political," Bush sniped, but the Common Core backlash that's causing him conniption fits is also opposed to academic excellence.
Truth and Consequences for Benghazi
The only real accountability for the Benghazi scandal will have to come in 2016. Reading through the competing partisan reports and listening to the congressional testimony of various officials this week, it seems fair to say that no actual crimes were committed (though you never know what you don't know). There were, in at least a figurative sense, criminal lapses in judgment by senior officials. Many of those lapses are recounted in the Accountability Review Board report. It found "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department" that "resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."
The Real Navy Yard Scandal
WASHINGTON -- In the liberal remake of "Casablanca," the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to "round up the usual weapons." It's always the weapon and never the shooter. Twelve people are murdered in a rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, and before sundown Sen. Dianne Feinstein has called for yet another debate on gun violence. Major opprobrium is heaped on the AR-15, the semiautomatic used in the Newtown massacre.
For the Record
Some people object to the fact that I generally jump around in my articles instead of devoting each to a single topic. They have my sympathy, but I'm afraid I can't possibly accommodate them. It would be too much like firing a musket at a herd of charging buffalo. You might pick one off, but you're sure to be trampled to death by the others. Other conservative pundits can do what they like, but I prefer using a machine gun when it comes to liberals.
GOP Should Take a Stand on Debt Ceiling
According to reports, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has been urging his colleagues to back off on the budget fight and focus on a debt ceiling showdown. In exchange for an increase in the legal limit on federal government borrowing, Ryan believes that the GOP can demand a series of items, starting with a delay of Obamacare, the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and other spending reforms. It's still doubtful Republicans will be able to extract any meaningful concessions on Obamacare, but the president's "I will not negotiate" over the debt ceiling position is undermined by the inconvenient fact that he already did, in 2011. And at the very least, depicting conservative opponents as crazed nihilists becomes slightly more precarious for Democrats because of public opinion.
Democrats No Longer Following Obama's Agenda
Presidents tend to set the agenda for their parties. Most of the party's members of Congress tend to go along. This has been increasingly the case as Americans over the last two decades have got out of the habit of splitting their tickets and have voted, in proportions not seen since the 1940s, entirely for candidates of one party or the other. When Barack Obama first took the oath of office in January 2009, his fellow Democrats, with their large majorities in Congress, hurried to pass his key legislation.
Mass Shootings: America's Psychosis
After every mass shooting, I write a variant of the same column. Perhaps I'll republish this one when the next attack happens. The increase in mass shootings over the course of the past several decades is not imaginary. In 2000, The New York Times analyzed 100 mass shootings between 1949 and 1999 and found that 73 of them had happened since 1990. Since 2000, according to Mother Jones magazine, there have been 33 more, including the recent massacre at the Navy Yard. The majority of the killers have untreated mental illness.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
GOP Ready to Confront the Passed
The House wasn't planning to be in session next week, but after yesterday's announcement, it's a good thing they've changed their minds. Members will need all the time they can get to launch the most aggressive strike against ObamaCare yet. To the cheers of conservative activists everywhere, Republican members of the House emerged from a closed-door meeting with the news everyone was waiting for: the GOP is ready to fight.
Shepard, Martin and the Power of Leftist Myth
Next week, "The Book of Matt" by famed investigative journalist Stephen Jiminez, is slotted for release. The book tells the true story behind the murder of Matthew Shepard, who has become the angelic face of victimhood in the gay rights movement. Shepard's murder in 1998 launched a national effort, spearheaded by President Clinton, to push for a hate crimes law including sexual orientation. It became the basis for Hollywood's addiction to storylines involving the killing of gay men (see, for example, "Brokeback Mountain"). Shepard, the mythology went, died for America's homophobic sins.
Climate Change Ice-Capped
There is a tradition in politics that is similar to one in the legal profession: When evidence supports your position, make your argument based on the evidence, but when it argues against your position, ignore the evidence and appeal to emotion. The evidence is piling up that "climate change," formerly known as "global warming," is losing evidentiary support, despite recent "preliminary findings" by a group of "experts" from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that a Washington Post editorial suggests may prove, "warming has boosted the chances, in some cases significantly, that certain unwelcome weather or weather-related disasters will occur." The Post and other "true believers" ignore or ridicule a growing body of evidence rebutting their beliefs.
Idiots Against Guns
The Idiots Against Guns in the media and Congress overdid it this time. Not wanting to miss a chance to politicize a shooting tragedy, the anti-gun nuts went berserk Monday when news broke that a man had gone on a rampage at a D.C. naval base and killed 12 people. Long before the facts were known or clear, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and their liberal cousins launched their latest gun-control jihad.
Crazier Than Liberals
There's been another mass shooting by a crazy person, and liberals still refuse to consider institutionalizing the dangerous mentally ill. The man who shot up the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, Aaron Alexis, heard voices speaking to him through the walls. He thought people were following him. He believed microwave ovens were sending vibrations through his body. There are also reports that Alexis believed the Obamacare exchanges were ready to go. Anyone see any bright red flags of paranoid schizophrenia? (Either that, or Obama's NSA is way better than we thought!)