Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
How's That Obamacare Waiver Workin' Out for Ya?
Exactly two years ago this week, the Obama administration announced it had issued more than 100 waivers en masse to a select group of companies, unions and other health insurance providers seeking relief from the onerous federal health care law. The Obamacare waiver winner's club now totals 2,000. Where are they now? Answer: In the same miserable boat as every other unlucky business struggling with the crushing costs and burdens of the mandate. Among the first and most prominent recipients of the Obamacare waivers for favors were large restaurant chains that provide low-wage, seasonal and part-time workers with low-cost health insurance plans called "mini-med" plans. An estimated 1.7 million workers benefit from such plans. Obamacare forced companies carrying such coverage to raise their minimum limits on coverage to no less than $750,000 annually. Another Obamacare provision forces all employers to spend at least 80 percent to 85 percent of their premium revenue on medical care.
GW Was MIA
Democrats have been blaming George W. Bush for the last four years. Now I think it's time for Republicans to start blaming George W. for the next four years. For a week we've been pinning last week's debacle on everything from Mitt Romney's moderation to low Republican turnout. But the most important Republican who didn't turn out to support Romney this fall was George W. Bush. You can make an honest argument that G.W. was as much to blame as anyone else for our being unable to defeat an incompetent incumbent of historic proportions.
Demography Is Destiny
Liberals brag about having won the hearts and minds of America, as if, through logic and argument, they've persuaded people to accept their bankrupt European socialist ideas. Democrats haven't changed anyone's mind. They changed the people. More white people voted for Mitt Romney this year than voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Barack Obama lost white voters by 20 points -- the widest margin since 1984. But in 1980, whites were 88 percent of the electorate. In 2012, they were 72 percent of the electorate. Not only that, but the non-white electorate is far more Democratic than it was in 1980.
The Monolithic Black Vote -- and My Republican Dad
In 13 wards in Philadelphia, reports the Inquirer, President Barack Obama received 99 percent of the vote! A local Democratic ward leader outlined the strategy: "In this election, you had to point out to people what was at stake. And in many cases, they felt that the Romney doctrine was not going to favor the working man." Obama appears to have held on to most of his percentage of the black vote from 2008 -- even though the black unemployment rate in October reached 14.3 percent. Emmanuel Cleaver, the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, admitted: "If (former President) Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House."
A Response to the President's Comments on Global Warming
During President Obama's press conference on Wednesday (his first in 8 months), he said, "We can't attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago." I must admit, it is refreshing to see the president discard some of the hysteria surrounding Hurricane Sandy and its link to global warming. Anthropogenic global warming activists will attribute every extreme weather event to global warming, which has now been termed "climate change" since the earth has stopped warming. However, the rest of his comments are certainly a byproduct of what I opined about in my August article, "Mr President, Tear Down This Wall." He is surrounded by a wall that does not allow the truth about climate change, or at least the light of debate, to ever come forth.
Enduring Ignorance, Part 2
Last week I apparently hit a nerve when I suggested that Republicans simply vote "present" on every initiative Democrats undertake in Congress. The response to that column was both overwhelming -- and overwhelmingly positive. Yet there was a bit of confusion expressed by some people that I'd like to clear up. I'd also like to give conservatives a far more upbeat assessment of where we go from here. First, the confusion. A few people thought that voting "present" was tantamount to surrender. I would respectfully suggest that compromise, aka "splitting the difference" between such concepts as tyranny and freedom, solvency or bankruptcy, and American exceptionalism or mediocrity, is far worse. Furthermore, a "no" vote implies something equally onerous. It the idea that a particular issue is viable, as opposed to utterly contemptuous.
Sex and the City (of Washington)
The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over an extramarital affair has raised and will continue to raise a number of questions. First among them (OK, maybe not first, national security being more important, but stay with me) is why should he have resigned? I am always amused when journalists use the words "sex scandal" when writing about such things. Having abandoned most standards for what used to be called "upright behavior," culture now "tsk-tsks" when someone is caught in a compromising position. Bill Clinton didn't have to resign after the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He lied about their assignations under oath, for which he was later impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate. His liaisons in public office were legion, stretching back at least to his time as governor of Arkansas. Petraeus' dalliance appears to have been a one-off. Is there a different standard, and if so, based on what?
A Casket Cartel's Comeuppance?
WASHINGTON -- Shortly before 123 million voters picked a president, 38 Louisiana monks moved the judiciary toward a decision that could change American governance more than most presidents do. The monks' cypress caskets could catalyze a rebirth of judicial respect for Americans' unenumerated rights, aka privileges or immunities. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina damaged the trees that the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey near Covington, La., harvested to support their religious life. So they decided to market the sort of simple caskets in which the abbey has long buried its dead. Monasteries in other states sell caskets, but these Louisiana Benedictines were embarking on a career in crime.
Sex and the Generals
Washington -- Sex remains the surest prop for all that is funny ... and sad. In the first instance, we often call the result ribaldry. In the second instance, it is always called tragedy. General David Petraeus has, in war, been a hero. In public service, too, he was a national asset. But toward the end of his soldiering, his life is now cast in doubt. As the head of CIA, the doubt has increased. Almost certainly, as director of central intelligence, he was no Dick Helms or Bill Casey. Those names from a better era illuminate the dreariness of this tawdry episode, and I hope it is merely tawdry, not anything more than that. Certainly, it could not be the national betrayal spoken of by Ben Stein this week at Spectator.org, could it?
To Win, Obama Sacrifices House, State Legislatures
Barack Obama attended more than 200 fundraisers for his presidential campaign, but he refrained from raising money for congressional Democrats. That proved to be a wise move for him, as were his strategists' decisions to run heavy ad campaigns against Mitt Romney and to build an even more effective turnout machine in target states. But it proved to be less than helpful to his party. Democrats did gain two Senate seats thanks to clueless Republican candidates and Republicans' failure to produce better turnout. But Democrats got beaten badly in races for the U.S. House and state legislatures. That's clear when you compare the number of House Democrats after this year's election with the number of House Democrats after 2008.
A Post-Mortem
How is it, people wonder, that Obama could be re-elected with an economy that's barely breathing; a foreign policy that led to the Benghazi massacre and a cover-up that puts Watergate in the shade; soaring prices at the gas pump; a war on the oil and coal industries; a diminished military; increased taxes; ObamaCare; handing GM over to a labor union; and an unemployment rate that's worse than the one he's spent four years complaining he inherited? How, indeed? Well, for openers, Hispanics see the federal government as one big piñata, filled with goodies. Likewise, blacks, single women and immature males, think that Uncle Sam is really their Sugar Daddy.
Oh, We Forgot to Tell You ...
The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, etc.) wins re-election, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years -- mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the Iraqi insurgency and Hurricane Katrina. Apparently, like tragic Greek heroes, administrations grow arrogant after their re-election wins. They believe that they are invincible and that heir public approval is permanent rather than fickle.
The Need to Explain
The most successful Republican presidential candidate of the past half century -- Ronald Reagan, who was elected and reelected with landslide victories -- bore little resemblance to the moderate candidates that Republican conventional wisdom depicts as the key to victory, even though most of these moderate candidates have in fact gone down to defeat. One of the biggest differences between Reagan and these latter-day losers was that Reagan paid great attention to explaining his policies and values. He was called "the great communicator," but much more than a gift for words was involved. The issues that defined Reagan's vision were things he had thought about, written about and debated for years before he reached the White House.
Electoral Collage
The United States Constitution provides for an indirect election of the President. That is, you didn't vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney last week; you voted for electors pledged to vote for one or the other. The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which superseded a large section of Article II, Section 1) suggests says that the ballots of the electors in the several states having marked their ballots for President and Vice President shall "transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted."
Security Threat Investigation Delayed to Protect Obama?
Why is the FBI only now investigating potential Broadwell leaks?
Gay Marriage at the Ballot Box
Supporters of same-sex marriage have reason to cheer after last week's election. Supporters of democratic self-government, even those of us who oppose gay marriage, do too. On Nov. 6, for the first time ever, voters in three states -- Maine, Maryland, and Washington -- redefined marriage by popular vote. In Minnesota, residents said no to a constitutional amendment enshrining the traditional understanding of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. There is no denying the significance of these results: Previously the issue had gone to the ballot in 32 states, and in all 32 same-sex marriage was defeated. Gay-marriage advocates have insisted for years that it is outrageous to put what they consider a question of civil rights to a vote, but going 4-and-0 on Election Day presumably made the outrage a lot easier to swallow.
How Long Does It Take to Tell a President His CIA Director is Under Investigation?
How long does it take to tell the president that his CIA director is under investigation? Here is the answer Americans are now supposed to believe: longer than it took for the White House to discover a YouTube video did not inspire the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. In June 2010, President Obama fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the U.S. commander in Afghanistan because McChrystal had criticized civilian administration officials in the presence of a writer from Rolling Stone. Obama immediately named Gen. David Petraeus -- hero of the Iraq surge -- the new field commander in Afghanistan.
It's Not 'All Over' Until We Stop Fighting
Anyone who has been through a terrible storm, like Hurricane Sandy, knows that one of the first tasks in the storm's wake is to look at the landscape and assess the damage realistically. So too for us, in the aftermath of Romney's defeat. "Devastating." "Unbelievable." "It's all over." Those were the feelings of patriotic conservatives across America when the elections results rolled in.
Camp Bastion Families Want Answers About Afghanistan
While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boozes it up in Australia and the Pentagon grapples with more floozy eruptions, outraged military families are still waiting for answers about the forgotten 9/14 attack on Camp Bastion. Muckrakers and distraction engineers are having a front-page field day with the so-called "sex scandal." But for surviving relatives and colleagues of heroic Marine Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell, it's the national security scandal at Afghanistan's Camp Bastion that deserves headline coverage. There's been a virtual blackout of the alarming story in the national press. As I reported last month, the meticulously coordinated siege by 15 Taliban infiltrators -- dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons -- resulted not only in two deaths, but also in the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam. Six Harrier jets were destroyed; three refueling stations were wiped out; six hangars were damaged.
Sex Beats Benghazi
You've heard the old adage that sex sells. But as we're recognizing more and more often, sex wins elections. Here's the brutal truth: the American people seem far more interested in what happens in the bedroom than they do what happens on the battlefield. How else to explain the media's fascination with CIA Director David Petraeus' steamy sex scandal, even as they ignore the ramifications for the investigation of four murdered Americans in Benghazi, Libya? Two days after President Obama won re-election, Petraeus submitted his resignation letter to Obama, supposedly over an affair with biographer Paula Broadwell. The FBI had been investigating the affair; another four-star general had gotten tangentially entangled in the investigation. The story was juicy.