Barone says the three rules changes for campaign strategists are:

1. Money is no longer everything
2. Personal campaigning is less important
3. Social conservatives are not the driving force

But it’s still early, and the people paying the most attention are those who always pay attention. The wide swings in the polls show that not only are people unsure whom to support, but that support is thin for most voters and most candidates.

Increasingly, political activists and opinion leaders are in essentially constant contact with one another. We watch debates with one eye on the television and the other on Twitter or a chat session presented on our favorite blog. As Barone says:

Behind all these apparent changes in the rules of the game has been the increasing importance of new media, which makes political communication cheaper, more plentiful (for those who are interested) and harder to control.

But the assumption that new media’s influence with activists will translate into influence with the less politically interested public is a weak one.  More and more people are taking to the Internet to connect with friends, communicate for work and for their many and varied interests. For us, that includes politics. For many, it simply does not.

People use the Internet to search out and locate their own interests, but those interests are not based on geography. Elections, however, are. As long as we base elections on geography and not on individual issues, it will still be necessary to reach out to people geographically.

The old gatekeepers — local politicos, TV news and newspapers — are increasingly bypassed. It’s a more polarized politics, but also one that is more democratic and more open.

The local politicos have been bypassed, it’s true, but that’s primarily because they’ve quit trying, not because of anything structural getting in their way. The basic structure of state, county, municipal, and precinct division still exists.

The problem, as many readers will know, is that of the approximately 400,000 precincts in the U.S., only about 200,000 are filled (in either major party). If you are a Republican, do you know who your Precinct Committeeman is? Have they contacted you and asked you to vote yet this year?

The party structure is of singular importance in who wins an election.  It is the one tool conservatives can use to defeat the left, with their ownership of the media, unions, and the cadres of energetic youth. Yet, we let it gather dust, a curious relic of a bygone era.

Conservatives and small-government activists must enter the Republican Party by becoming Precinct Committeemen where they live. Take care of your own back yard. It’s not a job for people in a far off city, it’s a job for you. You will talk to your neighbors, enlist their help, and burn away the laziness that has infected our national politics.

Because as long as we elect people to represent the place where they live, we will have to elect them by going there.

If Jonathan Martin of Politico ever stops beating his wife, I think the public has a right to know about it.

I’m only pretty sure none of Jonathan Martin’s dog fighting took place in the United States.

I’m very sure we’ll all be shocked when the full extent of Jonathan Martin’s dog fighting and child slavery involvement is finally revealed.

Now, I’m not saying that Jonathan Martin is a child pornographer, but to my knowledge he has never denied it.

-=(*)=-

Maybe Politico isn’t attacking @TheHermanCain so viciously because he’s a black conservative, but just because he’s a Republican. Along with pigs flying, that also is possible.

What is clear is that Politico’s attack on Cain is a high-tech lynching:

As R. Stacy McCain notes:

The basic problem is that, absent a court proceeding, “harassment” is an accusation impossible to refute. And if you can get tens of thousands of dollars in “go-away” money by making such an accusation, hell, why not?

So just like Anita Hill, a he-said-she-said smear will, in some minds, stick.

Which is the point.

One percent of 300 million give us 3 million people. So somewhere, scattered throughout the US, there are 3 million people whose money and property the Occupiers want for themselves.

But in America there is considerable mobility between those groups.  We are not members of classes or groups, but individuals who happen temporarily to share income levels. Our “class interests” may coincide for a time, but it is patently foolish to push for laws that take from the rich and give to the poor while making mobility more difficult.

It is exceedingly easy to become part of a group of 3 million that is the 1% most of something. Let’s take a look.

• There are on the order of 3 million farmers and people married to farmers in the United States. I suppose it would be possible to redistribute the land they currently hold, although it might not be possible without a certain amount of dislocation.
• Approximately 3 million people graduated with some kind of post-secondary degree this year. Perhaps their educations should be redistributed, so that each of us could get a hundredth of an education every year. It seems to work for the public schools.
• Together, two largest public sector unions, AFSCME (1.6 million) and SEIU (2.1 million), currently have enthralled 3.7 million members.  Are they the 1%?  If so, I dread joining their ranks, unable to distinguish myself from the herd.
• The collar counties around Washington, DC now comprise the richest area of the country, having overtaken Silicon Valley in California this year. Charles (146,551) Montgomery (971,777), and Prince George’s (863,420) counties in Maryland and Fairfax (1,081,726) and Loudoun (312,311) counties in Virginia have a total population of 3,375,785.

All of these groups are the 1%, because each has benefits and a lifestyle not available to the rest of us. With the exception of public sector labor unions living in the DC area, there is not much overlap between the groups.

Welcome to America, where it doesn’t take much to become part of the 1%.

In one, America is a shining city on a hill, a market-powered engine built on great ideas, the first of which enshrines for us the freedom to do with our lives what we will and to do as we wish with the property we accumulate as a result of doing it.

In another view, America oppresses unwilling wage slaves into toiling in a dark wasteland, suffering the humiliation of knowing that someone else has it better than they do.

Below the fold you will discover that it was not always so.

At one time we shared a common vision. Before the Marxists invaded our government and the education system it forces on us, we knew that if we became divided by the arbitrary assignment of class or race, we would succumb to the second vision and in the process create the horror it envisions.

We can’t wait for the America that understood the truth of that video to be firmly in control again.

h/t to ORLibertyGal

-=(*)=-

Follow @lheal on Twitter.

The legacy media have paid undue attention to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) over the last month, as compared with the early tea parties. New media, on the other hand, have gone nuts over the relatively small, union-led anti-business protests. Unsurprisingly, many analyses of the two groups have tried to find commonality between them.

Except for superficial mimicry, despite politicians claiming otherwise the two groups are almost nothing alike, and the Occupy movement is doomed to failure.

James Sinclair made a valiant effort at a comparison and contrast, but failed miserably because of invalid assumptions. He assumed that the tea parties are as he describes them (emphasis added):

Both are popular uprisings against powerful-but-nebulous entities believed to be responsible for America’s economic struggles. Both are defined not by easily-identified leaders, but by the sum total of countless unique viewpoints, and thus are not capable of articulating their goals with any cohesiveness or specificity (nor should they be expected to). And both movements, to borrow the classification scheme created by Bill O’Reilly, are teeming with both pinheads and patriots.

Yet the tea parties rose not in response to the machinations of nebulous entities, but to counter the direct and specific threat to our nation posed by the bipartisan response to the 2008 fiscal crisis, and were triggered by the toxic flood of legislative sewage spewing out of the Marxist House, Senate, and President.

The tea parties arose spontaneously, and not as a planned event backed by groups with long histories of agitation.

The leaderless nature of the tea parties is a misconstruction; the tea parties were not and are not leaderless, but each is led by one or more people who organized the rallies.  The movement as a whole refused to become organized, in part because they knew that any leader would be demonized by the left. Also, these people are fiercely independent by nature. Just getting them to join together at the local level is trick enough.

The Occupy movement — with its spiritual roots in the thumb-sucking support group industry –  has taken that a step further to try to be truly leaderless. But it’s a cargo cult of leaderlessness, as if competing with the tea parties to be the most tea partiesque.

With a focus on consensus, one group even ostracized their organizer for attempting to lead them. But that may be simply a symptom of impending doom, like advertising for homeless to join and then discovering that some homeless people are that way because no one else wants them around, either.

The result will be either quickly dissipating groups of squabblers, unsure of their intermediate goals and unsure how to focus, or it will turn into a real mob.  My guess is the former, but if Congress would only pass the American Jobs Act, funding for the groups could doubtless be found and some real direct action taken.

The focus of the tea parties was clear: our government was spending too much, which would eventually lead to higher taxes for us and our children. The spending was and continues to be so outrageous and so unlike anything ever before in human history that tea partiers knew their own generation could not repay it.

Speaker after speaker in the early days rose to say the same thing: Washington was spending too much on items that were unnecessary.

The idea that tea parties are teeming with pinheads is silly. Sure, there is the Heal Maxim of Public Speaking: Everyone has at least one really great idea that becomes horribly comedic when spoken into a microphone.

But the tea parties are full of patriots, not pinheads. Except for the rare exception, they are people looking not to advance themselves but to save a nation. The underlying desire is to preserve the nation and culture in which we grew up to pass to our children and grandchildren.

The tea parties were a spontaneous reaction to rapid change. OWS shows up three years after TARP and the bailouts and claims to be a reaction to those events? It’s ridiculous. With the union involvement and small numbers, OWS has all the hallmarks of an Obama campaign stunt.

The Venn diagram Sinclair produced has made the rounds, and people seem to have accepted it without noticing that it’s incorrect. The tea parties and OWS are not upset at different things. They are upset at the same thing — crony capitalism. But their reaction to seeing it reveals just how different the two groups are.

The reason that distinction is important, and the reason I’m writing this, is that the myth of similarity between OWS and the tea parties is rooted in the belief that they’re really just saying the same thing. They aren’t.

It would be better if he square labels said “What OWS protesters believe” or “What Tea Partiers take from it”.

Let’s take a look inside that common area, at the cycle that includes corporate lobbying, government action, and corporate profit.

When the groups are shown the cycle, they see either corporations with too much power or government out of control. Tea partiers generally don’t mind corporate profit, since they know that is economic growth. Occupiers have a general trust of government power.

The tea parties want to clean up government and to limit its distortion of the free market.  OWS want to clean up capitalism, to end what they see as corporate control over government. Actually many in the movement believe that capitalism cannot be cleaned up, and want to replace our current market economy with one based on sharing, equal outcomes, and participation trophies.

The typical OWS protester is sure that the problem with crony capitalism is corporate control of the government, and that what is needed is direct action against the corporations.

But no matter how successful OWS becomes at attacking corporate power, a competitor will always arise to make its mark on government.

Businesses are involved in crony capitalism because government has the power to affect them. Government regulations are so difficult to follow in most industries that in order to gain a foothold, companies need full-time lobbyists to help in the formation of regulations — or to gain advantage over their competitors, one of the hallmarks of cronyism. Companies too small to afford a lobbyist have to make do with their industry lobby, a move which is often in conflict with their interests.

But the whole process relies on government power being available to aid the business. Remove the government power, and the whole cycle falls apart.

Restated, there is no way to interrupt the cycle at any point except by limiting government power. OWS would like to limit corporate lobbying, but that’s an impossible task (even if it were constitutional).

Some in OWS would like government to increase regulations on business. However, any increase in government power will only allow those currently controlling it, to the extent that they do, to continue to do so. Every increase in government adds to its complexity and to the ability of those who control it to benefit. The bigger it gets, the more pressing the need for a business to carve out exceptions for its particular operation. The more complex it gets, the easier it is for larger businesses to find their carve-out.

Even specific reforms targeting cronyism are unlikely to improve the situation unless government itself shrinks appreciably. As long as government holds the power to regulate businesses, it will also hold the power to favor one over the other. That power will be used.

The answer to the problem of bailouts and crony capitalism, then, is as the tea parties have been saying all along: smaller government that focuses on its Constitutional role.

The left saw the tea parties, and their electoral success, and tried to mimic the superficial features: leaderless groups of citizens in public protest. They saw the protests in Tunisia,  Egypt, and Libya, and dared believe their conditions in America were on par with those faced by people who would self-immolate just to send a cry of help.

But in endorsing Romney, Christie attacked as “intellectually dishonest” those who compare Romney’s mandatory health insurance law in Massachusetts with ObamaCare, despite reports coming out just today that Massachusetts officials were consulted in crafting the federal law.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

Yet it was Christie who refused to join in a suit with 26 other states challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare, citing cost of the lawsuit as a reason.

ObamaCare is set to cost states like New Jersey hundreds of millions of dollars. Christie, as a fiscal hawk, knows the details of the cost of the law to the states, for instance in its mandated Medicaid coverage increases. As more people are added to the Medicaid rolls, the federal government will cover most — but not all — of the costs. States would have to make up the rest, in a complex formula that decreases over time. And should the feds want to change the formula, it is New Jersey that would be stuck holding the bag.

So for Christie to offer up cost savings as the reason not to join with Florida and the other states is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

By not joining the suit, Christie sends the message that New Jersey is just fine with ObamaCare.

There is of course a deeper issue: is it constitutional for the government to mandate that citizens purchase a product? Christie seems to say that yes, it is constitutional.

In attacking those who believe RomneyCare and ObamaCare are fundamentally similar, which is to say, everyone but Romney, Christie may have damaged his candidate more than he helped him.

Redstaters will know this suit as the Ken Cuccinelli one.

James Lakely of the Heartland Institute said (emphasis added):

The Court said Virginia couldn’t nullify Obamacare because its law doing so was signed by the governor after the president signed his health care bill. Trouble is, Gov. Bob McDonnell signed his bill days before Obama signed his. It was only McDonnell’s public signing ceremony that came afterward.

Maureen Martin, senior fellow for legal affairs at Heartland wrote in the Heartlander that a Fourth Circuit panel “made a ‘rookie’ factual error serious enough to call for invalidation of its entire decision”.

Virginia had enacted a state statute — the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act (VHCFA) — declaring the individual mandate contained in the Obamacare bill did not apply to its citizens. Virginia then filed a lawsuit alleging the individual mandate violates the Commerce Clause of the United States because the federal government lacks the constitutional power to require individual citizens to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty.

But the Appeals Court held last week that Virginia lacked standing, because (as the court erroneously thought) having signed the state law after ObamaCare went into effect meant the state statute was a mere a political attack on it.

Read the rest at Heartland.org.

Follow @lheal on Twitter.

I am a Republican. Our party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery. 10 years later, it was gone.

I am a Republican. We believe in equal rights so strongly that we formed in 1854 to stop Democrats from treating blacks as pets.

I am a Republican. In 1860 we nominated a man who hated slavery, and Democrats went to war rather than give up their “pets”.

I am a Republican. For the last 200 years, Democrats have fought to keep blacks on the plantation, not wanting them to be free.

I am a Republican. My party has always pushed America to be color blind.

I am a Republican. I don’t care what color your skin is. My party has been the party of abolition, desegregation, and equality since 1854.

I am a Republican. Did you hear me? I said I don’t care what color your skin is. Now that’s cleared up, let’s talk.

-~:~-

I am a Republican. America is an idea worth more than me.

I am a Republican. My party doesn’t like war. But we like freedom more than we like peace.

I am a Republican. The Constitution should be read as those who wrote it meant it.

I am a Republican. Government exists to defend the freedom of its citizens.

I am a Republican. This nation is exceptional because its culture allows me unlimited success or total failure, and anything between.

I am a Republican. The American Dream is doing what I want and getting to decide when I’ve got enough or have had enough.

I am a Republican. Above my labor I value property; above property, life; above life, liberty.

I am a Republican. We don’t give five year plans for Americans. We give freedom, so Americans can plan.

I am a Republican. If a government shutdown or cutback will hurt your business, you should be planning for that.

I am a Republican. That government is best that governs least.

I am a Republican. When government is smaller, the people are freer.

I am a Republican. Government doesn’t grow in one area without growing in every other.

I am a Republican. Government is not the solution — government is the problem.

I am a Republican. All power, all authority, should be vested at the lowest level possible. Most of the time, that is the citizen.

-~:~-

I am a Republican. A gun in the hand of a frail old woman makes her the equal of any brute who would do her harm. We like equality.

I am a Republican. My neighbors know they can look to me in time of need.

I am a Republican. When we say we are for equal rights for all citizens, we mean EQUAL. RIGHTS. for ALL. CITIZENS.

I am a Republican. Life doesn’t begin with conception — life continues through conception.

I am a Republican. The right to life is ours from the moment of conception to our last, labored breath.

I am a Republican. If you want your liberty, you have it. If you want my vote of approval, behave yourself.

I am a Republican. Tall fence, wide gate.

-~:~-

I am a Republican. I believe in changing things, if there is actually something wrong. Usually there isn’t.

I am a Republican. Our party has always stood for equal rights, smaller government, and the traditional family.

I am a Republican. I’m a fiscal, social conservative, pro-gun, pro-life defense hawk. Some of us are not all of those, and I’m OK with that.

I am a Republican. Each of us believes a little differently, but we have a name. In fact, we are a name. We’re all RINOs.

I am a Republican. Even the most liberal of us are not wealth-redistributing commie drones.

I am a Republican. I will not smear other Republicans, nor will I stand idly by while others do. I will defend them.

I am a Republican. I hereby endorse the Republican nominee for President in 2012, whomever that may be.

Yours in liberty,

@lheal

All of this would be on the level of a family feud, but of course the left-wing media wants to blow it out of proportion.  Given how they need to deflect attention from what’s really going on in Washington, like corruption and overspending, an otherwise unremarkable skirmish among conservatives is just what they need.

Now that the dust has settled somewhat, I hope to provide a post mortem on a fight that never should have happened. In short, Radtke should have kept silent or noncommittal on Redstate’s involvement in the Virginia Senate race. Redstate on the other hand, should have stayed that way.

“All politics is local”

– Tip O’Neil, (D-MA)

A year or so ago Erick Erickson made a rather public notice: he was putting his family, property, and livelihood in the Lord’s hands. Soon afterward and as Redstate prospered, a radio gig, a CNN job for Erickson followed. Elijah trusted, the fireball consumed the sacrifice, and the rains came.

But Elijah found himself in the cave soon. It seems that last winter, after Erick Erickson endorsed Jaime Radtke for the Virginia Senate race, people higher up the corporate chain asked Erick to downplay his support. Why they did that and why Erick complied are classic examples of  the local nature of politics. The close interplay of personalities and the unique circumstances of individual p0litical players often outweigh their own ideological motivation. Relationships matter.

Speaking of such, and by way of disclosure: I believe I am the one who convinced Jaime to attend the Gathering. At the Smart Girl Summit, she asked me to pass on to Redstate insiders her request to speak. Word came back that the schedule was indeed tight. I suggested that she attend the Gathering and befriend the bloggers and other attendees, whether she got to speak or not.

And at least Erick was expecting her to do just that.

But by Leon Wolf’s account, she was in fact given a speaking role. It would have been odd had Radtke not been asked to speak ahead of  The Undefeated, since she appears in it. Redstate asked her to speak for 20 minutes about her campaign for Senate and introduce director Stephen Bannon.

Wolf said of Radtke’s speech at the Gathering:

Radtke, on the other hand, showed up and, because many of us were generally supportive of her campaign, an invitation was extended for her to introduce Stephen Bannon, director of The Undefeated, which we were screening during the closing dinner. Given that there was simply no speaking slot available, it was thought that this would give her a good opportunity to say a few words about her candidacy. Again, this was her assignment: introduce Bannon, say a few words, let people watch the movie.

As explained, Radtke didn’t merely show up, but was urged to come to the Gathering. She was asked to speak for 20 minutes, and given what Wolf describes as his best rousing introduction. So here we have finally gotten to the root of the problem: Radtke was told she had 20 minutes and introduced as a rock star, while many in the crowd, especially at the Redstate insider tables, were expecting her to deliver a line or two and introduce Bannon. Lacking this context, no wonder they started shifting in their seats.

Of such tiny, seemingly insignificant gaps in communication are unfortunate disagreements made.

It is also unsurprising that some in the audience grew impatient with Radtke’s stump speech, as they were expecting to see a movie.  The more jaded and cynical in attendance seem to have been the most affected. I recall waiting to see the film myself at this year’s Smart Girl Summit in St Louis, which also featured a Radtke introduction. Having read Sarah Palin’s autobiography Going Rogue, I didn’t think I really needed to see the movie. Listening to a speech by a candidate instead of getting right to the movie would have put me in a bad frame of mind, as well.

But some attendees enjoyed Radtke’s talk. Redstate regular Breeanne Howe tweeted from the Gathering:

Listening to @jamieradtke speak at #rsg11, another rising Conservative Woman!

And this from Erik Telford, VP of the Franklin Center and creator of the RightOnline conference while at Americans for Prosperity:

Listening to @jamieradtke speak at #RSG11. She’s killing it!

Hardly the kind of comments one would expect if the speech were as bad as all that.

“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”

- Charles Bruce Brownson, (R-IN)

Then this past week Ben Smith of Politico asked a Radtke campaign consultant if a Redstate endorsement was important to the campaign.  Well, of course it was. Then why has Erick Erickson’s support for the campaign softened, Smith wanted to know.

The Radtke people went a direction I would not have gone at that point. Rather than supply a platitude about Redstate having only so much political capital to expend or some other bit of whitewash, the campaign asserted the truth as they heard it from Erick, that he had been convinced to back off.

So the Politico reporter, perhaps smelling a chance to cause trouble, asked if they had some proof of that.

And here the Radtke camp made a key error: picking a fight with the media. Rather than simply assert confidence in the information they should not have revealed in the first place, they compounded that mistake by claiming to have an email from Erick that would confirm it. Further, they agreed to supply the email to Politico.

At this point all kinds of alarms should have been going off in the heads of every campaign worker, consultant and most of all, the candidate. Dont Do This.  Do not release a private communication unless you are directly refuting the person who made it.

That kind of mistake is one reason I tell candidates to start at the local level: school board, city council, even mayor. Don’t run your first race on a stage you don’t command. These lessons, if learned early on with local blogs and newspaper reporters, will make later campaigns that much easier.

“If you only knew the power of the Dark Side.”

– Darth Vader

But the dark side has power. Convinced that telling the truth is never bad, the campaign broke a bond of loyalty and damaged a relationship. Sometimes the truth is supposed to remain a secret.

The response from Redstate was rapid and vicious, as regular site readers would suspect. Erick values loyalty more highly than many, which was made clear by his attacks on Jon Huntsman for planning a presidential run while working for Obama.

Rather than simply acknowledge his loyalty to the people who have contributed so much both to his site and the causes he favors, Erickson brought the full power of his fully operational battle site, not only writing a post about the Radtke incident, but including it in his Morning Briefing, guaranteeing maximum exposure.

Citing the anonymous remarks of Redstate front pagers hissing with feral cattiness, Erickson implied in his response that Radtke was intoxicated, a charge he was forced to retract when it turned out to have no basis in fact.

The long term consequences of the entire incident for Redstate as a site are difficult to see at this point. But if they lead conservatives to understand that some tactics are just not advisable, perhaps this painful episode may have been worthwhile.

At the first Redstate Gathering I got the chance to meet, among others, a relatively unknown candidate named Nikki Haley. I had never seen her before. I think she was at about 10% in the polls — it might be more than that, but she was not the front runner and her nomination was highly unlikely.

She spoke at the Gathering. What a speech! Full of personal history and conviction, it appealed to me as a husband, father, taxpayer and American.  At the time, I wrote of her:

Head.  Over.  Heels. A beautiful lady with a soft South Carolina accent and the grit of [then Redstate moderator] Thomas Crown. She said what I wish every other Republican would say: it’s the spending.

I got a chance to talk to her at length at a mixer after she spoke. Had her opponents in South Carolina brought race and religion into the campaign? Yes, they had, but politics is not for the faint of heart.

If you don’t mind my asking, what religion are you? I personally don’t care, because all of the Hindu people I know are good, moral citizens — my demand of a public official is that he or she has a religious faith, so I can draw some conclusions about how they will behave in office. There are no guarantees, of course.

She explained gracefully that her parents are not Hindu but of the Sikh religion. She became a Christian at about the time she got married. Her straightforward answers convinced me that her conversion was real and of the heart, not some political contrivance. I know what a convert sounds like. She is one.

Later in the campaign some supporters of her opponents came to Redstate to charge her with the High Crime of maintaining a non-Christian religion (and probably secretly wearing head coverings on her secretly illegal alien head, as well). I was able to relate the above conversation, and characterize it as a profession of faith. You see, I believe that one person’s claiming Christ as her own is the same as any other’s. Who am I, and who are you, to say otherwise?

It felt good, really good, to defend the ideals of a woman I had heard defending mine. It was also extremely disappointing to have to do so.

It might be coincidence, but the attacks on her religion at Redstate seem to have stopped then and there.  Perhaps it was my comment, or perhaps it was the moderators suggesting it. I like to think it was me.

I won’t get the chance to relate that story to Nikki, because I can’t afford the time or expense to attend the Gathering this year. But I suggest that you attend, fellow Redstater, and have your own Nikki Haley moment. I don’t know what it will be — nor even if it will be with Nikki — but I assure you, it will be worth the effort.

Your neighbors, local businesses, and the parents at the Little League game are probably conservative by temperament. The media trains them to think that the liberal position is the traditional, reasonable one, while the conservative position is somehow radical and improper. When they hear the opposite from you, they will usually be relieved to know they aren’t crazy. Do you want your ideas to have influence? Knock on doors. It’s that simple.

But while talking with people at baseball games and in the break room at work is necessary, it isn’t enough. You must also go to where people live. You must go to their doorstep.

As ColdWarrior reminds us, blogging has its limits. Conservative activists, are you active in your own back yard?  You blog, you tweet. You put political stuff on Facebook, to the joy of your in-laws and high school friends, and post well-reasoned theses in the comments section of the major news sites. And that’s great, because we activists need to communicate with one another.

Keep in mind, however, that on Facebook you are talking either to fellow activists who have befriended you or to people who do not want your message. If you want to find conservative activists and groups, you can find several on Twitter:

• @OfficalSGP Smart Girl Politics, a leading group of online conservative women
• @LibertyLinked a social site with GOTV tools  for political activists
• @FreedomWorks a social networking hub with over 100,000 activists

The best way to reach your neighbors is to contact your local political party. That may be tricky, because many of them act as if they don’t want to be found. They may have a web site, but contacting them is an opaque process that usually means getting on their mailing list.

But what you want is to contact the local party chairman. Probably your state party will have links to local party web pages or contact information. You may even have to call up a local elected official whom you know to be in your party and ask him or her — at their next opportunity — to give you the name and contact info of the county chairman or the best party official for you to reach.

Tell the chairman that you “want to help the local party”. Do not mention any specific issues or offer any criticisms of your party for now. You want to help.

For the cost of your presence at one meeting a month, with sometimes a fundraiser or parade, you can get plugged into the local political scene. You learn who is with you and who is against you. With a few phone calls and the odd Saturday or weekday summer evening walking around, you can take your political involvement to the next level.

Knocking on your neighbor’s door is how you knock on the door of real political activism: becoming a Precinct Committeeman. Here is a state-by-state list of how to become a Precinct Committeeman.

When you do those few simple and easy things,  the candidates come to you, hat in hand. They do that because they know you are out talking to voters and can be of tremendous influence. Candidates, including elected officials, will ask for and listen to your opinion on issues.

Have they done that when you blogged, tweeted, or whatever in the past? Odds are they don’t even know you exist.  But when candidates and officials learn that you are a precinct committeeman and you blog on politics, they will read what you write. Do you want the ideas you express here to have influence? Knock on doors. It’s that simple.

If conservatives were active in the local political parties, urging their friends to vote, we would not have a debt problem, and the current seemingly intractable battle over the debt limit increase would not be taking place.

If conservatives were active in the local political parties, and were urging their friends to vote, we would have conservatives in office. The time to fight bloated government and out of control spending is now, by knocking on your neighbors’ doors and asking them to vote for conservative candidates.

(And of course, follow me on twitter: @lheal)

I have always believed in leaving the law intact, in all its unfettered malfeasance, as a way to remind American citizens, legislators, and courts just how far we have fallen. But the time has come for that strategy to change. We should start the repeal process with one of the worst features at the heart of the PPACA, the mandate that individuals buy health insurance.

Avik S. Roy is a well-regarded expert in free market health care policy. Roy opposes repealing the individual mandate by itself, arguing at NRO that doing so would

• Destabilize the private insurance market, which would
• Be blamed on Republicans, and
• Cut the legs from under court challenges to the PPACA.

These are powerful arguments. Allowing the PPACA to go into full effect without the individual mandate would greatly harm the insurance industry. It would eventually lead to an end to private health insurance, as more and more people decide not to take on health insurance until they need to use it.  At the end of that road lies a single-payer system.

That Republicans would take the blame in the media for the mess approaches a tautology.  The only question is whether or the free market itself or its Republican adherents would receive more scorn.

While we pin our hopes for an end to the law on the courts, repealing the individual mandate would leave the Constitution’s defenders such as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli struggling for a case. Much of Virginia’s case, as I understand it, is built on Virginia having enacted a state law against forcing an individual to buy health insurance.

Dean Clancy of FreedomWorks writes in response to Roy that rather than destroying the private market, the threat of disruption caused by repealing the mandate would force Congress finally to dismantle the rest of the law. Without the fig leaf of the individual mandate, Democrats could not explain to their base that the law covers everyone — which it never did anyway. A new, more market-friendly Congress could enact more reasonable reforms that would actually accomplish the stated goals of health care reform.

Clancy argues further that the court cases against the PPACA are far from assured of success. Given the legal climate of the past 80 years or so, and the weak, unsteady conservative majority of the current Supreme Court, our judicial system cannot be trusted to strike down even what is to most people a facially unconstitutional law.

But my reasoning is more direct. If President Obama is reelected, we will either have the PPACA or something worse. As with his moves with the FCC and net neutrality, the EPA and cap and trade, and the NLRB, Obama will administratively reconstitute some facsimile of whatever provisions are stripped out of the law.

On the other hand, if Obama is not reelected (and if conservatives take the Senate from Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid), all of the PPACA will be repealed, whether the individual mandate is individually stripped out or not.

And the individual mandate, while unpopular, is not the worst aspect of the law. The employer mandate is far worse.  The mere threat of the employer mandate has been responsible for so much of the damage to small business since the law’s inception.

The employer mandate will continue, absent the individual mandate. The Obama economy will continue to grind America slowly into the ground. Obama will not be reelected.

Or will he? The deciding factor may not be the economy or health policy, but how many conservatives and moderates unhappy with the Obama Miracle actually get out to vote. And that, as we have said many times in these pages, will be determined by how many activists knock on the doors of our neighbors and ask them to vote. To find out more, visit the Precinct Project.

So repealing the individual mandate will have few negative consequences, even for the cynical plotting of power-centered Republican insiders concerned only for their own futures. There is plenty left to dislike in the PPACA, including its most damaging economic effects.

Finally, while leaving the individual mandate in place might make voters turn away from President Obama and the Democrats, voters will see the failure to exercise the power Republicans have been given in defense of liberty as evidence of Republican complicity with Democrats. Why should voters entrust the Republicans with power, when they won’t use it when given the chance and good reason?

More generally, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell, there is plenty else to dislike in the Obama agenda. Repealing all of ObamaCare will not by itself cause the economy to recover, not with Obama in office demanding daily that it not do so.  Don’t hesitate to use the power you’ve been given to demand that all of ObamaCare be repealed — the voters will reward you.

But with that reassertion, as Governor Walker told the corrupt union bosses where to go and how to get there, there has come some push-back. Hotheaded union activists are unhappy that the Governor and legislature saved teacher jobs by taking away from the union bosses the right to control the classroom. So we have this recall election.

But if you have a recall, you also need to know who is going to replace the recalled incumbent should they lose.

I know it’s crazy, but the Dems actually pushed through an open primary system when they were in power, so that anyone can vote in any party’s primary.

The Republicans are running unopposed, so there is no reason for you to vote in the Republican primary.

But on the Democratic side, the following candidates could use your vote:

These conservatives are doing their part. It’s time for you to do yours. Or you’ll get more of this:

How about this, Mr. Obama: No.

Stop spending so much money. Spend only what you take in. Don’t promise that you will spend more than that.

Get your regulatory boot off of the throat of small business. Stop trying to direct the economy.

It’s easy. Just let the people do as they will.

Do these things, and you will not have a deficit.

H/T Lee Doren, CEI

When I look around this room, I see America’s future, our doctors, our teachers, our nurses, our engineers, our scientists, our soldiers, our congressmen, our senators, and maybe our president.

There’s just one trouble for the Senator.  Article II, Section 1:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

So is that just the dulling effects of age creeping up on you as it does all of us, Senator Durbin, or are you trying to give out not just citizenship, but naturalization, as well?  Because any of the people to whom you were talking who were born in the United States would already be citizens.

Because I’d hate to think you were pandering to them, filling them with a false hope, all for the chance to make a dramatic statement for the cameras.

Before we get into the heart of the matter, though, let’s dispense with a red herring. In every form of expression there are exceptions and limits to absolute freedom. Just as we do not allow people to shout something false in a crowded building that would likely cause a panic, we don’t allow someone to hold up a sign saying the same thing. More importantly, for every form of expression there will be reasonable limits placed upon the content of the expression based on the particular attributes of its medium.

So just as inappropriate speech is restricted to avoid a riot or panic, inappropriate content on a blog or web content can in theory (if not in practice) be restricted, as well.

But the nature of Internet posting is that it is less likely to cause a public panic or offend the viewer than is public speech or broadcast content. Internet users must choose to access its content, and cannot receive it passively.

Ah, someone has a hand up at the back. What if there is someone playing a web video in public on a large screen, so passers by are exposed to it?

The answer, of course, is that the content being played in public could be stored anywhere. And when it is being played it is not, in any real sense, “on the Internet”, but in public. The fact that the content is being in distributed in public makes it a fundamentally different form of expression than something which Internet users must seek out. Even so, we protect the public expression of ideas, and so we must protect the public storage of those ideas on the Internet at least as much, or they will never be expressed.

With that foreground, let’s get to it. The point of the First Amendment is to protect the free expression of ideas, whatever form that expression takes.

• I can read aloud something someone wrote. Should I be less free to read aloud what they wrote than they were to print it?
• I can transcribe something someone said. Should I be any less free to transcribe and then quote in print what they said than they were to say it?
• Since I am no less free to do one or the other, I must be as free to do both.

A similar argument holds for any form of expression, whether it is an Internet blog post or writing stamped in cuneiform tablets. If a person is free to perform the physical act of expression, whether it be skywriting or oral speech, then the content of that expression should not be infringed, subject to the usual caveats.

Speech and press, therefor, should be just as free.

As the Missouri Constitution says,

That no law shall be passed impairing the freedom of speech, no matter by what means communicated: that every person shall be free to say, write or publish, or otherwise communicate whatever he will on any subject, being responsible for all abuses of that liberty; …

Another question concerns the difference between amateur bloggers and professional journalists, and sometimes comes up in discussion of reporter shield laws. Should someone who writes professionally be more free than someone who doesn’t?

That is really two questions: 1) are bloggers and print or broadcast journalists the same, and 2) should amateurs and professionals have the same rights?

As for the first question, we have already noted that traduction from one form of expression to another does not or ought not change how the content is protected, subject to the usual caveats. In particular many or most newspapers now have online versions, some of which feature amateur bloggers. Clearly, whether the content appears in print or online ought not matter.

As for whether amateurs should be covered by shield laws, the question really boils down to the definition of “professional”.

What if a journalist, such as an intern, only makes minimum wage? Clearly if the intern says something controversial or latches on to a source desiring anonymity, they have as much right to protection as someone making more than minimum wage.

Similarly, what if the journalist owns a small publishing business, and makes $100/week? What if they make $1/day, or a penny a year, or lose money one year, as has happened to many newspapers? Obviously the amount of money earned ought not matter.

Not to beat a dead horse, but what if all a journalist receives in compensation is a promise of repayment? What indeed if the only recompense is intangible, like the accolades of a grateful nation for the brilliant refudiation of her ideological opponents, delivered from Facebook?

It seems obvious, then, that amateurs deserve the same legal protection as professionals, if such a distinction can even be made.

A major purpose of a free press is to check the power of government. Restricting that freedom or the protection of our laws to those who are paid would have a chilling effect on free expression, limiting whistleblower activity to those who can profit from spreading the word about it, rather than to the press pool of all citizens.

OK, then, enough belly-gazing. Let’s get back to rousing the nation to throw out the Marxists.

Redstate’s own ColdWarrior and Ron Robinson invited several precinct activists from around the country to sit on a panel at the recent RightOnline conference, put on by Americans for Prosperity. Our topic was the “Importance of Precinct Activism”. Below the fold you will find some more details that I didn’t include in my portion of the event, and get to see me talking.

Successes in Illinois

Gordy Hulten is the former Illini Pundit (site now dark), former Congressional campaign manager, and a long-time Precinct Committeeman in Illinois.  When a vacancy opened for Champaign County Clerk, he was present at the meeting at which a successor was chosen. The reason he was at the meeting is that such replacements are typically handled at the County Executive Committee meeting of the party of the former incumbent. That is, the Precinct Committeemen decide who gets the office, and they often pick someone from their own ranks.

Gordy told me that after all the years of working on campaigns, even running them, he learned as never before how elections work when he became County Clerk.

Brian Milleville (Redstate’s anacreon) and Stephanie Rieman are tea party leaders in Effingham, Illinois. Both are PCs. Brian got elected to the City Council for on a shoestring budget, his greatest expense being shoe leather.

Your first job as a PC is to recruit a replacement

• Every PC should lead a team of 1-7 volunteers (block leaders)
• Many hands make light work
• Get your GOTV network in place

You are engaged in a multi-level qualification process, not a system of accepting or rejecting people. You are looking for assistants, candidates, conservatives, Republicans, and right-leaning moderates. You should also be identifying people who will always vote Democrat, but on single issues, like abortion or gun control, can be counted on as temporary allies.

Your main job is to recruit allies, both entire groups and individuals within the group.

• Know the culture of group you are speaking to
• Approach the leader and supply talking points
• Let them do the talking to their group

Go to:

• Churches
• Unions (quietly)
• Civic groups – Masons, KofC, Rotary, softball team
• Local chapters of national orgs – Chamber, NRA, churches
• Businesses (see concordproject.org)
• Doctors and nurses

Some local chapters of national groups are liberal, some are conservative. You have to identify which is which. That is why you, as the local person, are doing it.

The Old GOTV Model

A.k.a “gentleman’s agreement” or “combine”

• We have our safe districts
• They have their safe districts
  So:
• We will try to win just enough of the rest for Victory

The typical result is phone banking for GOTV, with an election eve “72 hour program” focused on swing areas.

What Is Wrong With Victory?

• It assumes voters don’t change. WI, MI, VA
• It plays to collectivist strengths
• It cedes territory
• It leads to decay
• It alienates voters
• It ignores coattails

Voters age, growing more conservative as their youthful silliness is replaced by wisdom born of experience. Liberal excesses and the obvious failure and hypocrisy of their policies slowly turn leftists into conservatives. Societal changes, demographic shifts, and economic ups and downs make for political

By ceding districts to the left, we allow them with their smaller numbers and energetic activists to focus on battlegrounds. We have more widespread, but usually less energetic, support. We need to fight them everywhere, and make them defend everywhere.

By ceding territory, we lose areas we might not, and interest of the local activists fades. That leads to voters who think we don’t care — even that we don’t care because of what they look like.

Finally, the biggest reason we need to compete everywhere is that a vote is a vote. The 10 votes we gain in an area that usually votes 90% the other way are the same 10 votes we might gain in a “swing” area.

What Is Wrong With Victory?

• Winning an election is not enough. This is a decades-long process
• We must defeat the collectivists so soundly and thoroughly that their ideas are discredited and none will claim them.

Instead, we need to have a local Precinct Committeeman in each precinct, who builds an ongoing relationship with the voters in it. He or she should have a team of people who will call their neighbors and knock on doors, and be advocates for conservative values in the convenient store and the church parking lot. By doing that we can try to win everywhere, all at once.

Are You Humble Enough?

Going around knocking on doors, instead of attending a fund-raiser a candidate, requires humility. Speaking as a blogger to other bloggers:

• If you blog for attention, you’re doing it wrong
• If you blog to make a difference, that’s great
• If you really want to affect your world, start where you live
• If we all do that, we will win

Have You Served Your Country?

• If you want to do so again, this is easy compared to military service
• If you have never served, you can do so
• In America, we use the ballot box, not the ammo box

Why Are You Doing This?

• Why do you blog?
• Why podcast?
• Why on politics?
• Why from the right?

The Reagan Quadrant

I introduced what I not-quite-cynically called The Reagan Quadrant. Reagan never explicitly used this chart, of course, but in all of his speeches you can see it. He wanted people to adopt his conservative values, and that is what drove him.

The horizontal axis of the chart is simply Left versus Right, in the usual sense that we all recognize. I’m not trying to say anything profound with the labels, though books have been written doing so.

The vertical axis indicates motivation. Is your motivation for what you do in politics the ideals and principals you want to see furthered, or is it the acquisition and retention of political power?  Everyone has a mix of these motivations, and sometimes it’s difficult to decide how we ourselves are motivated. Do we want to win some election because it will advance our cause, give us a job, or will make us more powerful so that we can further our ideals?

That is the real question: do you want political power to advance your agenda, or do you mouth the words about advancing some set of ideals to gain power for yourself? As I said, everyone has mixed motivations.

In the video I assert that RNC chair Reince Priebus is a conservative motivated to power. I’ve never met Reince, so I judge only by what I hear and see. The caveat that everyone has mixed motivations applies especially here.

Another example of the application of this chart is the the tough time Barack Obama is having. We on the right don’t like him because he’s a committed leftist. But on the left, they are growing disillusioned with him because his motivation is the retention of his own power, more than furthering the ideals they share.

Join Us

In the precinct movement, we want people who are motivated by constitutional conservatism to enter the political party of their choice and turn them all slowly back to conservative principles. It will take a long time. We’re not going anywhere.

The second video above doesn’t make it clear, but people kept coming down in waves to indicate that they will become PCs.

A growing number of Redstaters have realized that the way to influence the parties is on the ground, as precinct committeemen. If you are ready to join us, say so in the comments.

To learn more about Precinct Activism and turning out the vote for conservative candidates, visit The Precinct Project.

photo credit Terry Farmer

I took the day off work on Tuesday, May 24, and went to Springfield, IL to attend a lunch for pollster Scott Rasmussen. But, as it happened, that was the day for the Springfield hearing the Illinois House and Senate (state level) redistricting committees.

At the hearing I greeted a couple of legislators I had met, telling them I’d be talking about the public perception of impropriety in the redistricting process. I went in to the hearing and signed up to be a witness.

The committee co-chairpersonages (Democrats) testified first, giving a litany of goals for the redistricting process: to keep communities, townships, and counties intact, to pay attention to geographical boundaries, and to retain “the bond that develops between legislator and voter”. That got my attention.

Next they interviewed their paid expert, Prof Allan Lichtman of American University. Lichtman explained how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as interpreted by the courts, more or less mandated that they try to form districts to give minority voters a majority. His presentation was more nuanced than that, and I don’t mean to mischaracterize him by oversimplifying.

He did stake out the position, however, that the only way to know if a district or map satisfied the legal requirements of the Voting Rights Act was to pass it and wait to be sued. This follows the Pelosi strategy: we have to pass it to see what’s in it.

Witness after witness rose to plead their case for their particular “community of interest”. Everyone was cognizant of the need to make sure African American voters were taken care of, and had a chance to “fully participate in the electoral process” by making sure the candidate of their choice gets elected. Hispanic voters? Have to look after them, too. And those Latino voters. And Los Hispanics again. Oh, and make sure you don’t count a district as being majority Latino, when not all of the citizens counted in the census are “voting citizens”. Yeah.

My hair was standing on end with rage at this open racism. I took notes and made a brief outline for what I wanted to say.

When my chance to testify finally came, I was overly hyped from my suppressed anger, and stumbled around embarrassingly at first.

What I said, reconstructing from memory and notes and as reported here, was:

I appreciate the work that has gone into the redistricting process. We are all patriotic Illinoisans trying to do what’s best for our state.

We’d all agree that the Voting Rights Act mandates that we pay attention to racial issues when doing the redistricting. I’m sure the committee finds doing so as abhorrent as I do, but it’s at least defensible given the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

But what is equally abhorrent and indefensible is paying attention to “bonds” of incumbency in the process. That is nothing more than the raw attempt to retain your jobs as incumbents.

Illinois has a real image problem across the nation. Like the budget battle, it’s an example of institutional corruption that I hope you recognize.

There were no questions — an no eye contact, either. I’m not sure they were entirely happy.

I left for a nice lunch, getting in late to meet Scott Rasmussen and the fine people at the Illinois Policy Institute.

I got home, and who should call but Rep Tim Johnson, (R-IL15), my Congressman. Just to chat, he said. Congressman Johnson has been very solid on the issues ever since the financial crisis of 2008, even voting against TARP and the bailouts. He describes himself as a Constitutionalist, and his voting record bears that out.

So we chatted. I reviewed the day a bit, and mentioned RightOnline. Several of the members of this site are participating in a breakout session on the Precinct Committeeman Strategy, or how to radically improve our voter turnout and reform the political parties.

I mentioned that while there had been talk of primary challenges to some of the members in the area, I hadn’t heard anything about him. I said I almost wish there were a primary challenge, because that would help us get in practice for the general election, which is going to be a tough at the top of the ticket. He said he agreed, and would welcome a primary opponent to crush. (OK, I added “to crush”. He was more diplomatic.)

He said he was interested in all of that, and he’d be back in touch as the election drew closer.

I’m sure he will. That is what happens when you become a Precinct Committeeman. Smart candidates court you.

But the highlight of the day was actually when the satellite dish salesman came by. I told him I had a deadline, and sent him away. I wrote for a bit, and saw him coming back. I went out to meet him, and apologized for sending him away, that I had a news article to turn in.

That got us talking about politics. It turned out he had a Political Science degree, but was working the summer in Illinois to earn money to get his Master’s. He really wanted out of sales and into politics or government. He described himself as an independent. As I gently questioned him, it turned out that he was a socially conservative Mormon from Utah, fully behind the Tea Party, and didn’t want to identify with the Republican Party. The thing that drove him most, beyond the social issues, was the appalling low voter turnout.

I told him about the PC Strategy: we want people like himself who are committed to conservative principles, and driven by those principles, to join all political parties, starting first with the Republican Party. We will

• Return voting to its proper place in the culture
• Identify, train, and support principled constitutional conservative candidates.
• Reform the political parties, to make them instruments of civic virtue rather than corrupt vehicles for obtaining political power.

He was excited about returning to Utah and getting involved in a party to restore his country. I got his email address, and have sent him to the Precinct Project, to learn how.

Crossposted at Unified Patriots

But that strategy is flawed, and its faults have been revealed by the rise of Barack Obama and laid bare by the Tea Parties. The political environment, at least in the 2012 election cycle, will not favor candidates who chase the ephemeral middle.

The long years of George W. Bush’s presidency were marked by an increased polarization of the electorate. The left hated him from the start. The long years of war …

But you don’t need a history lesson. We’re good and polarized now. Barack Obama continues his daily partisan attacks, unlike any president in living memory. The base is ready for someone who will stand up to Obama and defend our principles.

But outside of the two camps, apart from the 40% who consider themselves conservative and the 20% who call themselves liberal, there is another 35% who do not accept a label. But that does not mean they are all alike, nor that they are less opinionated than those at the extremes. Many are uninterested and uninformed, or vote for someone who sounds and looks good. But many are highly interested in politics and hold strong views that do not match up well with either party.

Independent, that is, does not mean “moderate”. Political belief can no longer be modeled on a left-right line, if it ever could. Likewise, trying to fit us all into quadrants or points on a compass is equally fruitless. The number of political differences in what we believe about a given issue, how strongly believe it, and how important we believe the issue to be varies with each individual, and changes over time.

It is a mistake, therefor, to treat independents as being somehow between the right and left. For any given issue, there is a limitless supply of places where they can be.

Newt Gingrich is a scholar far beyond my depth, a man of great learning and intellect. And yet, it is easy to see why his campaign stumbled out of the gate. Gingrich is playing by the old rules, trying to maintain his own conservative ideals while appealing to the middle.

As an excellent piece by the matchless Michael Barone notes,

Ryan’s Medicare plan was part of the budget resolution that all but four Republicans voted for in the House. It is for all practical purposes the platform of the Republican party. And Gingrich seemed to trash it.

What Gingrich actually said, as Barone points out, was “I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering”. Some wonder at that, because Ryan’s plan isn’t attempting to design society, but merely to redesign government to be the least intrusive it can be, given an electorate determined to use government to care for the aged.

Gingrich was referring to the fact that Ryan’s plan does not end government involvement in health care delivery. It holds the promise of inserting some amount of choice and competition into Medicare. But what Gingrich knows, as all conservatives should know, is that any system designed to mimic the free market without being the free market is going to fail in some as yet unknown way.

Conservatives know the plan is not perfect. Ryan’s plan is intended to be an improvement, a way to keep the country solvent while we work out other changes.

But then Gingrich had to go and characterize the plan as “radical”, a word the left had chosen as a way to attack it.

That is the real sin here: Gingrich was using the language of the other side, in a clear attempt to stake out the moderate ground. In doing so, as Barone says, he gave the press and Democrats (but I repeat myself) an easy way to beat up on Ryan’s plan.

How can a plan be a radical change when it doesn’t kick in for a decade?

Mitch Daniels was introduced to many outside the Midwest by his profile in The Weekly Standard last June, in which he is supposed to call for a “truce” on social issues. But Daniels was really arguing that we need to keep fiscal issue front and center, and not waste political capital fighting between ourselves.

But even that is problematic. Here again we have the left-center-right model, nuanced a bit to say that while the middle may be with us on fiscal issues, we dare not anger them by bringing up the disintegration of our society.

There are other examples, both with these candidates and others, such as Mitt. But this is already long enough.

My prescription for candidates is to be yourselves. If you hold conservative principles, make the case with the electorate. The left is going to demonize you regardless of whether you’re an even-handed moderate or a doctrinaire conservative. If you hope to be able govern with any authority, you must campaign on your beliefs.

Perhaps this will help: your positions do not matter to many independents, only your eloquence. When are you more eloquent than when speaking from the heart?

As for all of that talk about terrorists having rights, even Constitutional rights, and attempts to apply our criminal law to the battlefield, it was all meaningless. And despite having a cadre of anti-military leftists in the White House, our system worked.

During the campaign for the presidency, for example, then Senator Obama conflated crimes on US soil committed by people who were US residents with those captured on the battlefield overseas:

A terrorist is a civilian who commits a crime against other civilians to further a political agenda. Motivations, unlike the simple facts of injuries sustained or property damage done, must be determined at trial, and there is no way to judge motive ahead of time. So domestic terrorists must of course be tried in our civilian criminal court system, or at least arraigned there. To say otherwise is to open too wide the door to abuse.

Terrorists caught on the battlefield or nabbed overseas, on the other hand, should be treated as we used to treat pirates: on the consent of two officers, relieved of their heartbeats.

But that was not the stated policy of the Obama Administration. Rather, even those captured on the battlefield are mirandized, to be held over for criminal trial. For all of the talk about extending the rights of American citizens to foreign nationals caught violating the law of war, Osama Bin Laden was presumed guilty of 9/11, having been long ago convicted in the court of public opinion.

We recall that this has been the policy for a while. Eric Holder predicted last year that Bin Laden would be a battlefield casualty, saying

You’re talking about a hypothetical that will never occur. The reality is we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.

It turns out he was right. When the time came for the final assault on the bin Laden compound, everyone who was anyone gathered to watch the video feed, missing only the popcorn.

So let us not kid ourselves: it was a hit. We hunted him down at considerable cost in blood an treasure, and we shot him.

So when the United Nations Council on Human Rights investigates President Nobel, er Obama for war crimes, and they will, we should recognize that his guilt is ours.

And flip them the bird.