Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Will $4-a-Gallon Gas Do the Trick?
I keep hearing people insist that Obama will win re-election in a cake walk. Frankly, I don't believe it. According to the polls in September, 2008, he would have lost to John McCain, who ran as lousy a presidential campaign as Bob Dole and Michael Dukakis, if the economy hadn't suddenly tanked. So what has Obama done since then that would give him an edge in 2012? ObamaCare? Cash for Clunkers? Fast and Furious? Solyndra? A $16 trillion dollar deficit? Nixing the Keystone pipeline that would have brought us thousands of jobs and oil from a friendly source? Turning the likes of Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Jacob Lew and Kathleen Sebilius, into czars? Kowtowing to the Saudis, George Soros and the unions?
Red Ink on the Rise
When it comes to regulations, President Obama's message to his conservative critics seems to be: Message received. Early last year, he vowed to crack down on over-zealous rule-making, noting that the "rules have gotten out of balance" and "have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs." He's right -- they have. But actions speak louder than words, don't they? For regardless of how tough the president may talk on regulation, his administration has enacted far more major regulations -- and significantly more expensive ones -- over the first three years of his presidency than the Bush administration enacted during its first three years.
High-Flying Corporate Welfare
WASHINGTON -- Sallie James was born in Australia on July 4, 1976, which suggests that Providence planned what happened 30 years later: She moved to Washington. She studies trade policy at the libertarian Cato Institute and her report "Time to X Out the Ex-Im Bank" illustrates how corporate welfare metastasizes as government tries to rectify the inevitable inequities of its constantly multiplying favoritisms. And while picking American winners, the Export-Import Bank creates American losers.
Shutting Off Iran's Finances
On Thursday, the European Union (EU) ordered the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) to block Iranian banks currently subjected to EU sanctions from using their service. SWIFT is a financial transaction company used by almost every bank around the world to send payment messages to each other. Since global financial transactions are virtually impossible to implement without SWIFT, the move represents the EU's most determined effort to date to convince Iran that its pursuit of nuclear weapons is unacceptable.
The 'Inevitability' Vote
Many people may be voting for Mitt Romney because of the view in some quarters that he is the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States and the candidate with the best chance of beating Barack Obama, rather than because they actually prefer Romney to the other candidates. Inevitability has a very unreliable track record. Within living memory, totalitarianism was considered to be "the wave of the future." During the primary season, people should vote for whomever they prefer, on their own merits, not because pundits have pronounced them inevitable.
Today, Georgetown; Tomorrow, the World
By this time, anyone who's interested knows that Sandra Fluke wasn't just another young law student at Georgetown, but in fact was a 30 year old left-wing political activist who enrolled at the Catholic university in order to crusade on behalf of publicly funded contraception and abortion. Because the 800-pound gorilla of conservative radio, Rush Limbaugh, made the mistake of calling her a few names, he turned this otherwise insignificant ditz into the media's idea of a martyr. Unlike Joan of Arc, however, the only voice Ms. Fluke heard in her head was her own, which, being a liberal, she naturally assumed was God's.
King Dollar Will Cut Oil Prices
No matter how much President Obama protests, the simple fact is that he continues to oppose and mock and disparage oil and gas drilling. He is a prisoner of the environmental left, and he remains on the wrong side of energy history.
From The Comedy Store
President Obama hosted a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president and the British are getting along a lot better lately. They love to compare notes on ways the Tea Party's always trying to overthrow their rule in America.
Seaweed in Your Gas Tank
WASHINGTON -- Yes, of course, presidents have no direct control over gas prices. But the American people know something about this president and his disdain for oil. The "fuel of the past," he contemptuously calls it. To the American worker who doesn't commute by government motorcade and is getting fleeced every week at the pump, oil seems very much a fuel of the present -- and of the foreseeable future.
Rational Actors and Stuff
The idea behind economic sanctions is simple: If you deprive the people in a warlike country of enough "stuff," they're rational actors and they'll stop their aggression. Or at least make their leaders stop. The only problem with this theory is that it doesn't work. President Obama and Secretary Clinton are touting the latest round of sanctions against the human rights violators in Tehran. They are "rational actors," says Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Making the List: Surprised, Not Surprised
When I was going through Watergate, my life was threatened repeatedly. And in the early years of my ministry with Prison Fellowship, the authorities had to monitor various individuals who had made threats against me. In 1983 on my way to Prison Fellowship International's convocation in Belfast, Northern Ireland, I learned at a press conference that I had been placed on the hit list of the Irish Republican Army. The IRA was threatened by the work of Prison Fellowship there, because we were reconciling Catholic and Protestant prisoners in the midst of a very hot war euphemistically called "the Troubles."
Obama's Health Care Duplicity No Longer Debatable
President Obama said, "The package we've put together" will "start bending the cost curve on health care" and "cut the deficit by a trillion dollars." Even a sympathetic Congressional Budget Office has finally put the nail in the coffin of that howler. At the time Obama made the claim, we all knew it was specious, and study after study came out showing just how fraudulent it was. There was the double counting on Medicare, the "Doc Fix" scam and a host of others. When Rep. Paul Ryan asked the CBO to rescore Obamacare with more accurate assumptions, it didn't quite make the grade -- by hundreds of billions of dollars, which, of course, are but rounding errors for the federal spending virtuoso in the White House.
Politics: A Never-Ending Game of 'Hot Potato'
Warning: What you are about to read is a deeply cynical view of the 2012 election. If you're looking for puppies and rainbows, check back with me another time. Many conservatives feel like this is the most important election in our lifetimes because we desperately need to reverse the damage done by the Obama administration and get the economy moving again. Indeed, each of the remaining GOP hopefuls makes some version of this argument. They will fix what Obama (or Washington) has broken. The president, meanwhile, like a little kid smashing a clock with a hammer, says he just needs a little more time to fix everything.
Is Liberalism Lazy and Immoral?
The best advocates are often converts. So it is with Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. Brooks has an important forthcoming book, "The Road to Freedom," which I'll discuss in a minute, but it's worth pausing over the unusual career of Brooks himself because it says much about happiness, free enterprise and the unique American spirit that Brooks has spent the last decade attempting to save.
Costs for ObamaCare Skyrocket
A funny thing has happened on the way to the implementation of Obamacare, aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA): it's become much less affordable. When the law was passed in 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated it would cost $940 billion over a ten year period. The new estimate? $1.76 trillion.
The Myth of 'Middle-Class' Uncle Joe
This has got to be the bazooka of all Joe Biden blowhardisms. The nation's vice campaigner in chief went on the attack against Republicans this week, clad in full populist armor. "These guys don't have a sense of the average folks out there," said The Everyman. "They don't know what it means to be middle class." But who was his audience? Nope, not blue-collar workers in Allentown, Pa. Biden was speaking to an exclusive club of $10,000-per-couple campaign donors gathered at the home of the Senate's $200 million man, Democratic Mass. Sen. John Kerry, in Georgetown, D.C.
Hard-Rocking Hypocrisy
You know it's election season when Republican candidates get angry phone calls from liberal musicians telling them not to use their old music (like "Survivor" whacking Newt Gingrich for using "Eye of the Tiger" from 1982). Meanwhile, Democrats are handed new anthems on a silver platter written with their re-elections in mind. Bruce Springsteen's new album has been hailed as a soundtrack for Obama's re-election, especially the song "We Take Care of Our Own" ("wherever this flag's flown"). Springsteen is lauded for going on "a tear to raze Wall Street and raise Main Street." This is where author Jason Mattera comes in to laugh and point with the facts in his new book "Hollywood Hypocrites."
Afghan Ambivalence
WASHINGTON -- Four years ago, when then-Sen. Barack Obama was campaigning for president, he said of Afghanistan: This is "a war that we have to win." He also claimed, "The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared." But after three years of Obama's being commander in chief, it ought to be clear that he never really believed his own campaign rhetoric. Now, in the aftermath of recent setbacks, his words are further evidence of presidential ambivalence and uncertainty. None of this bodes well for those who hope for a positive outcome in the shadows of the Hindu Kush.
Who's to Blame in California?
In so-called "March in March" protests, thousands of students in California universities recently demonstrated in outrage over spiraling tuition costs. At both the California State University and University of California multi-campus systems, tuition hikes in recent years have far exceeded the national average. Meanwhile, universities slash classes, cut key research, and rely even more on exploited and poorly paid part-time lecturers and graduate-student teaching assistants.
What Now for Republicans?
Rick Santorum deserves credit for his impressive primary victories in Mississippi and Alabama. Newt Gingrich led us to believe he would win both states. He didn't, but he has vowed to fight on as the "real" conservative candidate, as opposed to Mitt Romney who only "says" he is a conservative. Romney still has a substantial lead in delegates, but lags in one vital category: enthusiasm. If candidate Barack Obama gave his supporters the political equivalent of a sugar rush in 2008, Mitt Romney is broccoli. It's his Mormon faith; it's his perceived liberal tendencies while governor of Massachusetts; it's his inability as a very wealthy man to connect with average voters; it's all of the above and probably more.