As much as it would pain me, it looks like the GOP’s best possibility on Tuesday would give them 50 seats in the Senate, with the dems having 48 seats, plus 2 independents that caucus with them.  So… if the GOP keeps their current power structure, they are assured of remaining in the minority with a 50-50 vote and Biden being the tiebreaker.  HOWEVER, if the GOP were to vote for McCain as Senate Majority Leader under that scenario, would Joe Lieberman jump on board and vote for McCain, who he supported in 2008?  That seems to be the only possibility for the GOP to wind up as the majority party in the senate, as it looks like it is either going to be 50-50 or 51-49 in favor of the dems based on my quick reading of the Real Clear Politics polling data.  Surely republicans wouldn’t be stupid enough to stick with McConnell if that would give them no possibility of winning back the majority, would they?

Ok, I don’t like the title either. It implies that healthcare needs to be “saved” as if the government can do it. I don’t believe that the government is capable of saving anything except for the jobs of government employees. Perhaps a better word would have been “fix”. Regardless, here is something I have thought up. Please comment with your thoughts.

1.) Everyone in this country is required to have a certain level of health insurance (i.e. insurance with emergency care with a deductible of no less than $5,000 or something like that). I don’t want government mandates either and I don’t like that… but if the fact is that the uninsured are costing everyone else a ton of money by getting free care at the hospital which translates into higher costs for you and me, then this would end up saving everyone money and would keep the government from taking control of healthcare. This should be a “soft” requirement of some kind based on #3 below. I don’t think the government should be jailing people for not having insurance, just telling them they are out of luck if they go to the hospital without insurance and without any way of paying for care.

2.) To make sure this is affordable for everyone, every person gets a tax break (a “refund” if you will) in the amount that they pay in health insurance each year. In other words, if you would be paying the government $20,000 in taxes this year and your health insurance cost you $5,000, your tax burden would be lowered to $15,000. This should also be applied to HSA’s. If you have a $5,000 deductible plan and you put $5,000 into your HSA this year, that’s an extra $5,000 that you don’t have to pay to the government that year. This would encourage more people to get high decuctible plans with an HSA and would save a lot of money in healthcare costs because when people are paying out of their own bank account (even an HSA) they actually ask about the cost and necessity of care before undergoing any tests or treatment. They’re less likely to get an MRI just because they felt a twinge in their back even though there is no radiculopathy or anything that actually merits an MRI. When your insurance is picking up the tab you tend to not care about costs or necessity as much so the doctor/hospital can (and often do) order tests that aren’t necessary. This would really save a lot of money in healthcare costs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which is the better option and I think the overwhelming majority of Americans would agree.

3.) Absolutely, under no circumstance, is a person without health insurance and without the money to pay for the services to be treated for free. If you decide not to get insurance and you don’t have the cash to pay for care, you’re out of luck. If you’re too poor to pay for any health insurance whatsoever, we already have a program in place for you. It’s called medicaid. Sure it isn’t as good as what the CEO at a fortune 500 company gets, but you can’t afford that insurance. I shouldn’t have to pay a boatload of extra taxes just because there are fewer doctors accepting Medicaid than there are that accept Blue Cross and you’re upset that I’m not paying for you to go to whatever doctor you want. You’re getting free insurance. Be thankful that the rest of us are picking up the tab for your welfare insurance and stop bitching about it.

I believe this plan would save a lot of money in healthcare costs and would keep the government from having control over healthcare decisions. The counter-argument as I see it would be that people would be deducting so much money from what they are paying to the government right now because of the extra tax breaks that the government would either have to cut spending or raise taxes (and we all know which option they would choose). However, whether we’re talking about paying money to the government and having them pay the doctors or doing it this way where the money never makes it to the government and we pay the doctors, it seems to me the only difference would be in who has the control. In this model, the citizen has the control whereas in the socialized medicine model, the government has control.

One of my biggest fears about the healthcare debate going on in this country is that while the majority of Americans don’t favor socialized medicine, they do seem to think that the healthcare system needs to be reformed. Unfortunately I am not seeing any plan whatsoever by the republicans to help the situation other than to fight the democrats’ plan. While it is important to fight their terrible ideas to save us from the horrors of socialized medicine, I believe we as republicans need to have a counter offer to the American people on how we would fix the problem of runaway healthcare costs. Your thoughts are appreciated as always.

The Republican Liberty Caucus seems to have found their 2012 candidate. They recently passed a resolution to encourage SC Governor Mark Sanford to run for President in 2012. In early 2007, the Council for National Policy, a semi-secretive and exclusive club of social conservative leaders including James Dobson (Focus on the Family), the late Jerry Falwell (Liberty University), and Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) was looking for a candidate they could support. At their February 2007 meeting, Sanford was a guest speaker and the group tried to convince him to run, offering their support if he would run. He declined, saying that he had a commitment to the people of South Carolina and that it wasn’t the right time with his four young boys. It seems to me that Sanford might just be the guy to get the support from all wings of the conservative movement (fiscal, social, and defense). He also has the support of the republican governors, who elected him to be the leader of the RGA. With his time as governor coming to an end in January 2011 and the support he seems to have from so many in the power circles, he’s going to be a very formidable candidate.

Here’s the resolution from the RLC:

RLC SANFORD RESOLUTION

Adopted by the RLC National Committee on 6/8/2009

WHEREAS Washington is fundamentally broken;

WHEREAS wasteful government spending is out of control;

WHEREAS puppet politicians are promising to spend trillions of dollars we don’t have;

WHEREAS Americans continue to lose their freedoms as our nation creeps toward socialism;

WHEREAS the American people are looking for bold leadership to renew our republic; and

WHEREAS the Republican Liberty Caucus Statement of Principles should be implemented to solve these problems;

RESOLVE THAT the Republican Liberty Caucus Board of Directors encourages Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina to run for President of these United States in 2012;

That Governor Sanford is a bold, independent leader who is able to fend off Washington’s culture of corruption;

That Governor Sanford has a vision that will protect America while safeguarding individual liberty and reducing government power;

That Governor Sanford has a stellar record as South Carolina Governor and a former member of Congress;

That Governor Sanford has not only embraced the label ‘libertarian’, but his actions logically follow his words; and

That Governor Sanford should be the choice of all Americans who want to return the country to its Founding principles.

My apologies if this has already been posted. In the first video below, Lindsey Graham is seen giving a speech at the SC Republican Convention. In the speech, he has this to say:

“I am not a libertarian. If you are, you’re welcome to vote for me and help this party, but we’re not going to build this party around libertarian ideals.”

That is an interesting comment to be making at a convention where the essential head of the SC republican party would be its governor, Mark Sanford. Sanford is an unabashed libertarian whose belief in limited government libertarianism is so strong that he recently sued the republican-led state legislature after they voted to require him to take all of President Obama’s stimulus money. That money includes $700 million that would be extremely detrimental to the state with expensive educational mandates from the federal government. Sanford wants to spend that money paying down the state’s debt so they will have more money to spend on education in the future rather than spending it on interest payments. Anyway, Sanford had this response for Graham, just moments after Lindey’s speech:

“Sen. Graham spoke and said ‘I’m not a libertarian and whatever, whatever …’ as if that’s an evil word,” Sanford said. “Liberty is the hallmark of the American experiment. (It) is the distinguishing characteristic of our Republic and frankly what’s made it great.”

Which of these two viewpoints would you like to see adopted by the national party? That’s the debate going on with republican politicians in South Carolina at the moment. I side with Governor Sanford and think he’d be an excellent 2012 candidate should he choose to run.

Ok, let me make the obvious joke here:

The set-up: President Obama today sat through a 50-minute speech by Daniel Ortega in which Ortega accused the United States government/military of being terrorists.

The punchline: As he spoke, a confused Obama raised his hands in the air and screamed “Hallelujia! Praise the Lord!”

In 1979, when President Carter decided that the federal government should take over our school system, which had previously been under state control, he ran into one problem: the constitution. The United States Constitution, under the 10th Amendment, says that anything not mentioned specifically in the constitution was to be left under the control of the state or local governments, or to the people themselves. Carter found a loophole. Instead of an official takeover, he decided to tax the American people and then spend that money on a federal Department of Education that would then send that money back to the states. It seemed like an unnecessary bureaucratic move, but it accomplished Carter’s goal. After the formation of the Department of Education, the federal government started telling the states that they had to do what the federal government told them to do regarding education, otherwise they would not receive funding from the federal government. Of course, their citizens would still be taxed for that money regardless of whether the state decided to accept the money and the stipulations that came with it. It was an unconstitutional goal that was accomplished by working around the constitutional limits on the federal government.

Now we have a similar situation with the current “bail-out” plans. The government is telling General Motors that they will give them our tax money, but only if they run their business the way the federal government wants them to. Yet President Obama wants us to believe that he has no interest in “running” General Motors. He’s running General Motors the same way the Federal Government is running our school system. They are doing the same thing with the money they are “giving” to the states. Rather than sending that money to the governors to use in a way that the governors feel will best help the people of their state, President Obama is handcuffing them by adding all sorts of stipulations to that money. If they accept their taxpayers’ money, they have to use it the way the Obama administration tells them to use it. No wonder Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina is reluctant to accept the money. The federal government is trying to run our companies, our states, and our schools. I guess we’ve come a long way from the days of President Reagan, who famously quipped that the nine most dangerous words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ronald Reagan knew a thing or two about rescuing our country from an economic collapse that was escalated by massive government spending. The answer is to get government out of the way so the people could bring the economy back.

If you think our federal government is doing a fantastic job of running our school system, continue your support for these bail-out and stimulus plans. If you don’t like the way they are running the school system, why would you want them running our companies and our states?

According to the AP, Obama brought his teleprompter to the press conference today. A very odd move, indeed. In fact, the article on his press conference starts out by asking:

“What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?”

Apparently Obama’s people were worried about pictures showing him with the teleprompter during the press conference, so instead of his usual Binky, they put a big screen TV in the back of the room for him to read off of.

It was a carefully modulated statement, and Obama—relying on a familiar crutch—read it off a flat-screen monitor perched at the back of the East Room.

Apparently the press is starting to get annoyed with his crutch. The article ends by saying this:

One of the few times he summoned raw emotion came after a reporter demanded to know why it took him so long to express outrage over the AIG executive bonuses.

“It took a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”

Even better, he likes to have it up on the teleprompter.

In a great Op-Ed in the WSJ, Governor Mark Sanford (a potentially great 2012 candidate) had some pointed words for the President. After explaining that South Carolina doesn’t want to be bailed out because “when you’re in a hole, the first order of business is stop digging,” Sanford had these strong words for the President:

Last week I reached out to the president, asking for a federal waiver from restrictions on stimulus money. I got a most unusual response. Before I even received an acknowledgment of the request from the White House, I got word that the Democratic National Committee was launching campaign-style TV attack-ads against me for making it.

Is this the new brand of politics we were promised? Instead of engaging with me and other governors on the merits of our dissent, I am to be attacked in television ads? In the end, I just don’t believe a problem created by too much debt will be solved by piling on more debt. This doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable or extremist position.

With others such as Palin and Jindal following Sanford’s leadership on this issue, it only goes to show why he would make a great candidate in 2012.

Wait, we have one:

Mark Sanford continues to be the only person who continues to stand up for conservative values.  Sure there are people who have a solid conservative voting record, but I don’t think anyone matches Sanford’s record and rhetoric on issue after issue.  Sign me up as a supporter for 2012 if this guy decides to run.

Well, I guess there is one good thing this stimulus bill will do for republicans.  It will help us weed out the fake conservatives from the real conservatives.  No, not in Congress.  Rather, it is the republican GOVERNORS who are now pushing for the bill to pass.  You remember the governors, right?  They’re the ones we’re most likely going to have to choose from in 2012 to be our nominee.  So which ones are acting on their conservative principles and which ones are going to the feds asking for a handout?  It may surprise you.

The 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, planned to meet in Washington this weekend with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and other senators to press for her state’s share of the package.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist worked the phones last week with members of his state’s congressional delegation, including House Republicans.

Those are two projected candidates that are actually lobbying congress for their share.  Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty are also asking for money, but they seem a bit more hesitant about it:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a former member of the House, said he would accept the stimulus money but would have voted against the bill if he were still in Congress.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is widely viewed as a potential presidential contender in 2012, said governors have little choice but to accept the relief being offered. “States have to balance their budgets,” he said. “So if we’re going to go down this path, we are entitled to ask for our share of the money.”

But Pawlenty expressed reservations about the cost of the plan and its impact on the federal deficit, which has already grown to over $1 trillion.

“I’m quite concerned about the federal government spending money it doesn’t have,” Pawlenty said. “We’re on an unsustainable path of deficit spending and borrowing.”

As usual, there remains one governor who is remaining steadfast in his conservative principles and has been speaking out against these bailouts from the very beginning (though he hasn’t officially said that he will reject this round of bailouts):

The most outspoken critic has been South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has warned for months of a steep spike in inflation and a severely weakened dollar if Obama’s plan passed. His state is on track to receive $2.1 billion of the stimulus money; Sanford has not yet said whether he would accept it.

“It’s incumbent on me as one of the nation’s governors to speak out against what I believe is ultimately incredibly harmful to the economy, to taxpayers and to the worth of the U.S. dollar,” Sanford said in an interview. “This plan is a huge mistake and is going to prolong and deepen this recession.”

Sanford outlined his concerns in December when the then-president-elect met with governors in Philadelphia to discuss the stimulus proposal. Sanford said he had heard nothing from the White House since then.

Associates say Sanford, who recently was elected chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has been disappointed in how few of his GOP colleagues have joined him in speaking out against the size and scope of Obama’s plan.

I’m sure times are tough, but if you want my vote for the GOP nomination in 2012 I sure don’t want to see you lobbying the feds to get bailout money!  I would have loved to have seen every GOP governor out there with Sanford BEGGING the government not to do this.  Unfortunately that isn’t happening.  Kudos to Haley barbour as well:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he wasn’t sure whether he would accept the approximately $3 billion his state would be in line for.

“Yes, we need some help and we appreciate the help,” Barbour said in an interview. “But I don’t know about the details and the strings attached to tell you if I’ll take all of it or not.”

In the joint interview tonight with Bush41 and Bush43, Bush43 apparently tells Fox news that “the GOP should remain anti-tax and pro-military.”  If you read between the lines, you will see the biggest problem with the current administration.  When he says that we should remain “anti-tax” it tells me that the President just doesn’t understand the fiscal philosophy of conservatism.  Anti-tax is not it.  We’re not about doing away with all taxes.  We’re about fiscal responsibility in which we spend as little as possible and do not tax the people for anything above that.  The President clearly believes that the success of the Reagan Revolution was the lower taxes.  In reality, the greatest success of the Reagan Revolution came in the early 1990′s when the GOP took the Reagan principles and applied them to the budget.  Once a conservative congress limited spending AND limited taxes, our economy thrived in a way that we had never seen before.  I only wish that the GOP hadn’t abandoned those principles when GWB took office.  Militarily, GWB has been an exceptional President.  However, is fiscal policies have been a disaster and I look forward to the day (hopefully 2012) when the GOP has a Presidential nominee who understands this.

Really? 

Considering the job description of the Surgeon General is to “oversee the operations of the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service”, I just don’t see how a neurosurgeon-turned-TV doctor is the best person to have that job.  How about someone with actual experience in the field of public health?

This is not anything against Sanjay Gupta.  I’m sure he’s a good guy and a good doctor.  This is just yet another case of Obama going with a high-profile person rather than selecting the most qualified people for these jobs.  As long as it gets him positive press, why does he care if they aren’t the best candidate?

This week, the republican governors named Mark Sanford the chairman of their association. Kudos to them for recognizing one of the few bright stars in the dark republican sky.

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As someone who does not think Newt Gingrich has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a Presidential election but is a great leader who has a history of reform in the right direction, I believe that now is the time for Gingrich to take the reigns of the RNC. He has the ability to raise money, the talent to run a major organization, and the foresight (and hindsight) to see what the country needs and how to bring it to fruition.

I like Michael Steele, but I do not believe that he is the man to lead us out of this great hole. He hasn’t shown the knack for reform that Gingrich has and was one of the candidates who lost in 2006. If he couldn’t get himself elected in the current political climate, what do we have that suggests he could bring the party out of this hole? Newt has done it before and he can do it again. Now is the time for Newt and I encourage all members of the RNC to support him as the next RNC Chairman.

So you’re disappointed in the election results? What are you going to do about it? We lost. Get over it. At least we don’t have people on our side claiming (falsely) that they are going to move to another country because their guy didn’t get elected. I guess that shows who the grown-ups vote for! So what can you do now that the election is over? Well, start gearing up for 2012. If there’s a candidate out there who you would love to see run for President, start writing letters to the candidate. Write their Chief of Staff and tell them that you would love to be a part of their team to run in 2012. Let them know that there are a whole lot of people out there that want to see them in the White House.

For me, that candidate is Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina. For you, maybe it is Bobby Jindal or Sarah Palin. Letters make a difference, so if you want your guy (or gal) to run in 2012, now is the time to start getting a grassroots movement together. I would like to see Governor Sanford at the top of a ticket with Governor Jindal in the #2 slot. That would be an ideal ticket for me. If Jindal doesn’t work, then put Mike Pence in the #2 slot. It is time for fiscal conservatives to take back the Republican Party and we don’t need to wait until 2012 to do it.

As both candidates brag about wanting more regulation for Wall Street, how about a call from “we the people” for more regulation of government. This bailout nonsense has got to stop. I understand why they did it with Fannie and Freddie. It wasn’t because companies can’t be trusted, it was because the government screwed up with these two companies over the course of 75+ years. Fannie and Freddie were ceated by the feds, sold (partially by the feds), and the elected members of the federal government were effectively on their payroll, allowing Fannie and Freddie the chance to do virtually anything they wanted and knowing they had a free insurance policy from the government. ENOUGH! Do you really think the companies would have let it come to this and taken all of those risks if they didn’t know the government would be there to bail them out when it all came crashing down? So why should we, the taxpayers of America, trust the federal government with MORE regulation? Why should we allow them to bail out more and more companies? We don’t need more regulation of Wall Street; we need more regulation over Washington!

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According to factcheck.org, McCain DID vote with republicans on 90% of the issues in 2007. However, in 2001 he voted with the party only 67% of the time and in 2005 he voted with President Bush only 77% of the time. Meanwhile, Barack Obama voted with the President 40% of the time and has voted with senate democrats 97% of the time. To sum it up, Obama has broken with his party a whopping 3% of the time during his tenure in the United States senate while the LOWEST percentage of votes McCain has broken with his party on in recent years was 10% and has been as high as 33%!

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Senator Obama, you gave a great speech tonight. You proved, once again, that you read a teleprompter much better than John McCain. The setting you gave it in proves that you believe you are destined to be president more than anyone has ever believed that about themselves. But when it came down to what you were actually saying, I would like to submit the following rebuttal.

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Today in Denver, Bill Clinton posed the following hypothetical question that has nothing at all to do with the current election (no, really… it doesn’t have anything to do with it… seriously!)

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Joe Biden’s history of plagiarism and “stressless scholarship” gave plenty of ammo to his enemies, one of them choosing to circulate a so-called “attack video” to demonstrate Biden’s outright plagiarism of a British politician’s speech. But this appropriation from Neal Kinnock was not the first occurrence of unacknowledged lifting by the senator from Delaware.

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