Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Obama vs. Catholics
The Brian Williams MSNBC debate in Florida was not only dreadfully boring -- I never thought I could ever long for commercials -- it was pathetic. Freed of the fear of triggering an avalanche of applause against loaded questions, Williams and his co-moderators couldn't bring themselves to utter one single question asking the Republican candidates to respond to Obama's mistakes. For almost two hours, not one Obama failure was cited. Apparently, his record is spotless. Instead, the candidates (especially Rick Santorum) were thrown four questions surrounding the 2005 legal battle in Florida over pulling the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo, which pushed all the liberal media hot buttons about "far right" religious conservatives throwing their religion around where it didn't belong. This isn't breaking news. But like the ABC debate fixated on contraception, it's evidence that liberal networks are focused on their agenda, not on the voters' concerns.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
South Carolina Message
Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House -- and a standing ovation from the audience. Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for Gingrich. The stunning victory in South Carolina brought Newt's candidacy back to life. But the message from South Carolina was about more than a reaction to how Gingrich dealt with a cheap shot question from the media. Nor was it simply the Republican voters' response to Newt's mastery as a debater.
First It Was the Catholics: Restricting Religious Freedom
In yesterday broadcast, I warned you that the Supreme Court's decision to grant religious groups a "ministerial exception" in hiring, while important, does nothing to halt the Obama Administration's relentless crusade to restrict religious freedom. Just Friday, the Administration announced it would not expand exemptions for religiously affiliated organizations when it comes to insurance. So, a Catholic hospital, for instance, will be forced to purchase insurance for its employees that would provide free contraception and sterilization services.
Just Attack the Media and We're At Your Feet
So the message South Carolina voters sent was -- "Anything goes so long as you attack the media." Whatever you think about Mitt Romney's shortcomings as a candidate -- and I agree with Mark Steyn, who said of his stump speech, "The finely calibrated inoffensiveness is kind of offensive" -- embracing Gingrich is like bashing yourself in the face to relieve the pain in your foot. Certainly it's possible that the voters have done all of us a favor. If Gingrich's success there scares Romney into becoming a better candidate, then it may work out well in the general election.
It's Complicated
A longtime conservative friend sent me an email after reading something positive I had written about Newt Gingrich: "Whoever votes (for) or supports Newt for president is out of their mind." It wouldn't be the first time I've been called crazy. He continued: "You can believe in redemption, as I do, but you are not thinking seriously if you support a person for president with the baggage he is carrying. What an example for our children and future generations when we dismiss character as the foundation for leadership."
Romney's Time to Step Up
WASHINGTON -- An Illinois lawyer who had a way with words once characterized a particular argument as weaker than soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that died of starvation. The argument for Mitt Romney benefiting from South Carolina's voting is almost as weak as Lincoln's soup, but here it is: In the physics of politics, actions generate reactions. Granted, Newt Gingrich carried 43 of the state's 46 counties, and at least six of the seven congressional districts, now leads in delegates, and his colorful personal life did not prevent him from decisively beating Romney among the women of a culturally conservative state. But Sunday morning, from coast to coast, Republican candidates for Congress, governorships and other offices awakened to a sobering thought: They could be running next autumn with Gingrich -- whose current approval rating nationally in a Jan. 12-14 Fox News and Opinion Dynamics poll was 27 percent favorable, 56 percent unfavorable -- atop the ticket. They have nothing to fear so much as an absence of fear about this. With Gingrich defining the GOP brand, the Republicans' dream -- unified government: a trifecta of holding the House, winning the Senate and the White House -- might become three strikes and they are out.
They Pick and Choose Which Ox to Gore
He had a mistress who was pregnant and his wife had terminal cancer; he was running for president and the press knew all about it. But there was no firestorm in the media about this juicy scandal until after the election of 2008 because John Edwards is a Democrat! Too bad Newt Gingrich is a Republican -- otherwise the media would see to it that he'd be home free, warts and all, just like John Edwards. But he is a Republican and he's running for the presidency, so members of the liberal media feel free to apply their traditional double standard, which always seems to come into play when the target is a member of the GOP.
The Question Is Not 'Electability,' but 'Re-electability'
Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President Obama's arrogance, what does it say about his electability? It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.
Evangelicals and Romney: Should Theology Matter?
As an American, a Republican, and a fiscal and social conservative -- and though I have endorsed no Republican candidate -- there is one thing that would disturb me greatly if Mitt Romney were not the Republican nominee: if Romney's Mormon faith were a factor in his defeat. Many evangelical leaders have said that if Romney is the Republican presidential candidate, they would not vote for him in the general election. What is implied -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- is that his Mormonism prevents them from voting for him in the primaries. Most evangelicals label Mormonism a cult, and many accuse Mormons of being dishonest for calling themselves Christians.
In Search of a Bulldog
One South Carolina Republican woman said she craved to see a "bulldog" at the top of the GOP ticket. That would describe Newton Leroy Gingrich all right. The next follow-up question went un-posed: Do you want a bulldog heading up the executive branch of government, and if you do, to what end? -- so he can leave teeth marks on legs all over Capitol Hill? Or so he can get a few useful things done for the sake of a country in crisis? In South Carolina, Gingrich seemingly closed the sale with customers alarmed enough over the national predicament to vote for the bulldog, in hopes he can win next November. Or alternatively -- as one Gingrich voter suggested to Rush Limbaugh -- to send a message to Romney: Get your act together, big boy; start talking us through these times.
Monday, January 23, 2012
There's Way Too Much Forgiving Going On
When Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardoned a number of murderers on his last day in office, he was acting in the proud tradition of several other political hacks. There was Bill Clinton, who not only pardoned Marc Rich, a major Clinton campaign contributor who had fled America with several million stolen dollars, but Harvey Weinig, a former Manhattan lawyer who had facilitated an extortion-kidnapping scheme and helped launder over $19 million for the Cali cocaine cartel. For good measure, among the 140 pardons he granted on getaway day were 16 members of the FALN, a Puerto Rican terrorist organization that had set off 120 bombs, mainly in Chicago and New York, along with Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg, who had been loyal members of the Weather Underground.
Yellow Light: The Supremes and Religious Freedom
A central concern of the Manhattan Declaration is the increasingly perilous state of religious liberty: scarcely a week goes by without yet another report about limitations on the right to practice our faith, at home as well as in the public square. That's why a recent Supreme Court decision is both very good news, but it's grounds for caution. The decision involved a school run by Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran church in Michigan. A teacher who had gone on disability leave threatened to sue the school because it hired a substitute for the remainder of the school year.
Tom Menino, Cable Guy?
Cable TV service can be purchased in Boston for as little as 55 cents a day, a burden the city's top politician regards as so unjust that he is demanding the legal power to override it. Mayor Thomas Menino spends a lot of time seething over cable fees. When Comcast, Boston's largest cable provider, announced last winter that the price of its basic package would rise to $15.80 a month, Menino excoriated the company's "offensive" rate as proof that "something is just plain wrong with the system." In May, he filed an "emergency petition" with the Federal Communications Commission, seeking "immediate" authority to regulate cable rates -- the better to shield subscribers "from Comcast's market power."
A Few Words in Defense of Negative Campaigning
Those who take a certain pleasure in denouncing the evils negative political advertising should have spent the last week in South Carolina. They could have plunked down in front of TV sets, especially during morning, early evening and late evening news programs, and by adroit use of the remote control seen one negative spot after another. They could have watched again and again the Ron Paul campaign's stinging denunciation of Newt Gingrich for, among other things, taking $1.6 million from Freddie Mac. They could have seen a similar assault on Gingrich from the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC (by the way, how do you restore something which by definition doesn't yet exist?).
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Top Ten, but Falling
If you were to rank the countries of the world in terms of economic freedom, where would the United States fall? First, or at least in the top three? The top five, surely. Guess again. Because there is, in fact, a resource that ranks every country by this measure -- the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom, and the United States comes in at No. 10.
Something to Argue About
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court can pack large portents in small details. When in late March it considers the constitutionality of Obamacare, there will be five and a half hours of oral argument -- the most in almost half a century. This is because the individual mandate (Does Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce extend to punishing the inactivity of not buying insurance?) is just one of the law's constitutionally dubious features. An hour of argument will be devoted to whether Obamacare's enormous expansion of Medicaid is so coercive of states that it is incompatible with federalism -- the Constitution's architecture of dual sovereignty. The court's previous rulings about compulsion point toward disallowing this expansion.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Politics and People's Lives
Long after they are released from prison, long after they have “paid their debt to society,” ex-prisoners continue to pay the price for their crimes. As highlighted recently in an excellent article in the New York Times by Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura, ex-offenders struggle to find employment, can be barred from public housing, and even be denied grants for tuition. And many are denied the right to vote, sometimes for life. That topic was pulled into the national spotlight last week during the heat of the presidential campaign.
With Conservatives Like These...
Santorum, Gingrich and Perry, all condemned Mitt Romney's Bain Financial for putting people out of work. If anyone should be sidelined, it's Santorum, Gingrich and Perry. For one thing, as every conservative who isn't running behind in the primaries knows, venture capitalists put their money where their mouths are. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the old adage goes. When it comes to picking winners, Bain has a far better record than the Obama administration. After all, Bain was gambling on turning around the fortunes of companies that were close to death or assisting in the birth of companies that would otherwise have been aborted. Obama, on the other hand, handed out billions of our tax dollars for no other reason than that company owners had contributed heavily to his presidential campaigns.
Mitt's Attack on Crony Capitalism
Let me build on Charles Krauthammer's great Friday column, "The GOP's Suicide March." Krauthammer argues that just as President Obama's class-warfare, soak-the-rich mantra started lagging in the polls, some Republicans on the campaign trail started making the case that Mitt Romney's Bain Capital was involved in nothing more than vulture capitalism, looting companies and destroying jobs. Keeping class envy alive. I'm not going to name names, because everybody knows who these Republicans are. Instead, I want to go positive and commend Romney himself. Romney did his best in the second South Carolina debate to fight for free-market capitalism and Adam Smith, and against the spread of Obama-style crony capitalism and class envy.
From The Comedy Store
Pittsburgh medical researchers discovered Tuesday that a person's adult stem cells could possibly be used to make them grow younger. Many doctors have been tinkering with it. Ron Paul has used it on his supporters for years and now they all look twenty-five.