How smart is it to keep raising hundreds of millions of dollars to support Republican candidates, and then turn around and hand it over to the Liberal Mainstream Media in order to try to get them elected?  Frankly I think it’s just plain stupid!  If you are a conservative, that money will only be used against you in the General Election, and it will only be used to elect more Liberals and Progressives, who will only continue to over tax you, over regulate you, and generally make your life more miserable.  It will only make you poorer while never serving to empower you!  Isn’t it quite obvious that we are following the wrong paradigm?  It is an unproductive paradigm that will never give us the ideological victory that we want. Then why do Republicans keep on doing this?

Let me offer at least a plausible explanation for what appears to illustrate very well, the definition of insanity.  It’s because for way too long the Republican Party has actually been controlled by east-coast Liberals.  Ronald Reagan encountered the “east-coast effect” when he ran for President the first two times, in 1968 and in 1976. But Reagan wasn’t the first, or the only conservative Republican to experience the determination of the “checked-pants Republicans” to maintain their firm grip on the GOP.

Richard Nixon was not really a conservative, but he was at least marginally better than his opponent Nelson Rockefeller was, at least at the beginning.  Nixon experienced the resistance of the Republican Party Progressives to give up the “keys to the car” and to relinquish control of the vehicle to someone other than themselves.  But Nixon was a “practical man” and he made compromises with the east-coast plutocracy in order to get what he wanted.  The only thing that even remotely resembled conservativism about Richard Nixon was his strong anti –Communist foreign policy.

However Barry Goldwater was a real conservative, and he definitely experienced the Progressive Republican backlash when he ran for the Republican Party nomination in 1964 against Nelson Rockefeller and won.  But this perennial resistance and open hostility to conservative values from the Republican Party Establishment probably cost him the General Election.  He was soundly trumped by Lyndon Johnson with the help from progressives in both political Parties, and the Liberal mainstream media who portrayed Goldwater as a hardline extremist.  The perennial resistance to conservative ideas within the progressive arms of both major political Parties goes back even farther than Goldwater, all the way back to the election of 1952, when Senator Robert Taft, the son of former President William Taft, along with his probable running mate, General Douglas MacArthur were sidelined by the Republican Party Establishment because of their fierce anti-Communist views.

It’s hard to know whether it was just their fierce anti Communist views that were actually the problem for Taft and Mac Arthur, or whether it was really their overall reluctance to take orders from the “powers behind the throne” that angered the Progressive Establishment.  In any event, “The Establishment” got behind Dwight D. Eisenhower who chose Richard Nixon as his running mate, and that was pretty much the end of Taft’s and MacArthur’s chances of winning!  The real conservatives in the race that year were Taft and MacArthur, not Eisenhower and Nixon. They had broad popular support and it was thought that they would be a shoe- in to win.  But that didn’t take into account the determination of “The Progressive Establishment” and the resources that they could bring to the table to accomplish their goal. “The strategy of the Progressive Establishment has always been to get the two most Liberal candidates nominated in the Primaries, and then to elect the most Progressive of them in the General Election.”

For a long time, real conservatives in the Republican Party have been given the short shrift, so this year’s State Primaries come as no surprise to me.  That’s why Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul have all been largely ignored by the Republican Establishment and by the mainstream media.  But is there a way around this perplexing, perennial problem, i.e. the stranglehold that the Progressive Establishment and the mainstream media exercise over our elections, and over the Conservative Movement?  In a word, maybe.

I have been writing articles on politics and current events for over a year now.  I keep focusing on the flawed mechanics of how we keep nominating our candidates, in other words the three M’s of electioneering:   Money, Madison Avenue, and The Media.  All of the electioneering only serves to enrich and empower the Liberal, mainstream press.  Our elections have become nothing more than a cash cow for the Liberal media giants, like ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX.  So what can we do about it?

When Ross Perot, a few years ago referred to that great sucking sound being the noise of American jobs leaving our country, he was only partly correct.  It is also the sound caused every two or four years by all of the money being sucked out of the pockets of conservative and moderate donors to Republican candidates, and being transferred into the New York bank accounts of the Big Liberal Democrats who own most of the mainstream media! Is there anything that we can do to staunch this financial bleeding, and still win elections?  Well, I believe there is.

I post all of my articles about politics and current events on my website <LessGovistheBestGov.com> I have not spent one red cent to advertise in the mainstream media in order to get noticed or to be heard above the din…And guess what?  If you type in the words: Newt Gingrich-progressive into the search engine, or into the address bar on the top of your computer screen, one of my articles on Newt Gingrich is #8 on the search results page, out of over 42,000,000 results! The same thing also happens when you type in the words : Newt Gingrich- establishment.  Out of 157,000,000 results, one of my articles on Newt Gingrich is #10 on the search results page!  But there’s even better news than that.  If you type in Newt Gingrich- progressive- establishment: BINGO you hit the jackpot!  Out of over 34,000,00 results, the top three items on the search page are three of my articles from <LessGovistheBestGov.com> There is also a 4th article from <LessGovistheBestGov.com > a little farther down in the #8 position.  In between are other articles from Glenn Beck, The Blaze, and ABC News. Similar results happen if you type in Mitt Romney- conservative;  or one world order- Newt Gingrich;  or Council on Foreign Relations-progressive-establishment.  When you type these last words into the address bar, the top four articles are all from LessGovistheBestGov.com!

I think this proves that there is definitely a way around the mainstream media chokehold on our political process, and that conservatives can be heard and we can get our message out without depending upon the mainstream media.  And we can educate and inform the electorate without depending upon the media spokes mouths, like George Will and Charles Krauthammer, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.  Even more importantly we do not have to drop any more money in venues that are openly hostile to our political ideology.  But I and others like me could use your help.   

You are willing to donate money every year to the RNC, or to Republican candidates like Rick Perry and Hermann Cain.  When it’s all sad and done, and of course it is very sad, they actually bilked you out of your money by pandering to your conservative values, and then turning around and handing it over to phony conservatives, or Liberal Republicans like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney!  Are you willing to give at least a small percentage of your hard earned money to support legitimate efforts such as mine that are actually trying to advance conservative principles?

What I do isn’t easy and it isn’t free.  I have personally spent over $20,000 of my own personal savings so far to get this website to the point where it is now being heard.  You ask me why it took so much money.  Well first of all, it’s not a lot of money when you compare it to what others are spending, much larger than me to be heard, and their internet search results are not any better than mine in many cases.  In some cases my search results are actually better than theirs!  By that I’m referring to Glenn Beck, the Blaze, Sean Hannity, ABC News, the Huffington Post, Alex Jones and his websites, Prison Planet and Info Wars.com.

But there are other people involved in the day to day operations of the website, and they charge for their time.  There is a website administrator who posts all of the stories and runs the nuts and bolts operation of the website.  She charges $60 an hour.  Four to five hours a week for fifteen months pretty quickly adds up to $15,000. Then there is graphic artwork that sometimes needs to get done.  That costs $60 an hour too.  These people have to put food on their table, and pay their mortgages, and provide for their families.  I use typists other than myself at times, and that costs $10 an hour.  I have an I.T. person who posts my articles on Facebook and Twitter and manages the responses.  She also posts my stories on other websites much bigger than my own, all in an effort to allow me to continue to write. And of course all of my time up till now has been absolutely free.

So after about a year I have spent over $20,000 of my own personal savings to get this website to the position where it can be heard above the din.  Why have I done all of this?  That’s a fair question.  Well, partly because I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life, and partly because I believe that this is a great country, which has been taken over by people in Washington with little minds.  As the great 18th century Irish statesman, Edmund Burke remarked, ”A great nation and little minds go ill together.”  I believe that the greatest nation on earth is worth it!  Freedom is worth preserving and passing on to the next generation.  And because way too many Americans put way too much of their trust in Big Government.  Washington wasn’t created to solve the everyday problems in countless little communities all across our country!  WE were!  It is not possible to hang on to our freedom without a quick return to the principles of limited Constitutional government, and to the very principles upon which our country was founded!

Recently I purchased some necessary equipment and I am learning how to use it, and how to do some of the other necessary things besides writing, that are critical to producing the finished product, which are the stories you read. That includes typing, computer skills, and learning how to navigate around the internet, as well as some of my own posting and the actual publishing of articles.  This will help keep costs down in the future.  If you can see the value in what I am doing, and the potential that my website has to express your own views, and hopefully to advance and even influence the national and local debates, then would you consider making a small donation to help the cause?

Finally I am grateful to everyone who has helped me so far to get the website to where it is today, especially to Thomas Harrison, who is affectionately referred to around here as Dr. Frankenstein, to Cindy Mallette, my trusted I.T. person, and to Kelly Hodsdon, Becky Lemler, Crystal Erickson, Linda Hamilton, and Rosalind Hora.

Someone once said,”Aim for the moon. Then at least you will clear the barn and not wind up in the manure pile.  I just hope I miss the manure pile!

We can win the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans, and ultimately we can win elections too!  But it will take education.  That’s the kind of education that probably won’t be coming from our public or private universities.  And you can bet that we won’t be getting any help from the mainstream media!  We will never win by spending more of our hard earned money in the Liberal mainstream media!  The search results pages that I mentioned earlier prove that real conservative voices can be heard right along with the phony ones sponsored by the mainstream media.

Feb 13, 2012 by jacobsonlv
There are so many violations of our conservative values within society that picking one is a tough task.
The separation of church and state has been an area of controversy in America, and while the Constitution clearly defends against a national, mandated religion, the meaning of this statement has been skewed over the years. It is important that the GOP candidates understand the importance of religion in this country’s founding principles.
Countless questions have arisen about the faith of GOP front runner Mitt Romney, a proud Mormon, and one whom many feel is the Republicans’ best chance at reclaiming the White House in 2012. Newt Gingrich has picked up where Rick Perry left off, attacking the Democratic administration’s “War on Christianity.” A war that he claims has oppressed religious freedom within our nation, as he states during a recent debate.

Just this week, President Obama has come under fire from the Catholic Church for a mandate that requires employers to provide their employees access to artificial contraception, sterilization services and birth control pills through their existing health plans. According to the words of Newt Gingrich, this new mandate is “another example of President Obama and his promoting of anti-religious policies.”
Over the last few decades, the Ten Commandments have been removed from our federal buildings, prayer has been banned from schools and other public meetings, and marriage and life have been redefined. Not to mention our very own President Obama publicly declaring that America is “no longer a Christian nation.”
These things are not merely just good ideas they are truths that our nation stands upon and when we begin to remove or dilute them from their intended state we lose our identity as a nation. There are some reading this that will cite the argument over the words “Separation of Church and State,” however many fail to recognize this ideology of how the church and government should interact was taken completely out of context. This idea that our government should operate separated from the church was taken from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in response to a constituent in which he was stating the government has no ability to establish a national religion or interfere with religious activities, not to keep these activities out of the government. This idea is illustrated here in his response entitled the Danbury Baptists Letter.
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Over the decades many candidates hide or diminish their religious beliefs in order to avoid offending others and to give themselves a better chance of gaining election to their intended office. However, we fail to realize just how large the religious majority is within America. In the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey conducted by Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College, we find that over 76% percent of Americans call themselves Christians. If this is the case it would seem hiding ones Christian views in order to appeal to the masses would be counterproductive.
This is certainly not an issue that can be fully examined or analyzed in one column, however, I feel it is important we are reminded and for some enlightened to these realities. Our nation is under attack on many fronts however history has shown us that the Judeo-Christian beliefs our nation was founded upon are quickly becoming extinct. Not only as conservatives but as Christians, it is our responsibility to speak up and take a stand for what we believe in. We are blessed to live in a nation in which we have a democracy that allows us to elect candidates that reflect our views and beliefs, ones who will stand and fight for the values that make our nation great.
Jacob Harmon :: University of California at San Diego :: San Diego, California :: @Jacobsonlv

Attending my first GOP caucus as a participant was an exciting experience.  I had some butterflies going in because I wouldn’t know anyone there and it was something new.  The experience was quite different from what I had expected.  I’d like to flesh out my overall impressions a little more fully.  For those who are old hands at caucuses, this may seem to be a pointless exercise.  I disagree.  I do think there is something to be learned from a novice.  Wearing my sociology hat, I hope to bring a play by play of the experience so new ideas can be gleaned from my observations.

I live in south Minneapolis and expected our caucus to be held in a small room with about twenty people.  Minneapolis is such a one-party area, of course Democratic, so I thought a smattering of people would come.  I was wrong.  The caucus was held in a small gym with several tables for the precincts to gather around.  Around each table were four chairs.  I presumed that meant the groups would be especially intimate.  They were, but my precinct had ten people and an observer.  Certainly appeared to b a much bigger turnout than they initially planned.

Our convener was a pleasant young guy who is active in the city party.  He had attended four years ago as a Ron Paul supporter and has been with the GOP ever since.  One other man had attended the GOP caucus previously.  Otherwise, the remaining eight of us were first-timers.  That was quite apparent when we got started.  None of us knew how the thing was supposed to be run, but we were all in good spirits about our foibles.

Before we got started, I watched as the people trickled into the room.  It was hardly a monochromatic, male dominated scene.  There were two conveners who were Somali, as well as a few Somali caucus-goers.  There were people of Middle Eastern descent.  There were a couple of African Americans.  There were East and Southern Asians too.  It wasn’t a group that could be considered stereotypical Republican at all, at least according to the media’s narrative.  About 40% of the group was female.

There wasn’t a single white male dressed in a business suit, certainly no one wore tails.  I didn’t see a Rich Uncle Moneybags’ top hat in the room.  There was not one person wearing Mr. Peanut monocles in the crowd.  Most of the people looked like they had just gotten off work and hurriedly dressed down for comfort.  What’s more, the crowd was also surprisingly young.  According to the Star Tribune editorial writers, Republicans are supposed to all be old white people with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.

That wasn’t the demographic I was witnessing, at all.

Many of the twenty and thirty-somethings were attired in post-Punk/former rock musician/hipster Uptown outfits.  These young people were just as heated and adamant as anyone else at the gathering.  I saw several people who I believe were gay.  In fact, I’d say at least ten percent of those attending were gay like me.  (By the way, Marilyn Carlson Nelson, none of us were attacked by roving gangs of homophobic Christian thugs as you have previously suggested)  The room had an electric charge to it as the caucus was about to convene.

Our little band of ten was unique perhaps.  We had only two people who had previously caucused with the GOP.  The other eight caucus-goers were driven by some motivation to travel to this alien space, gather with people they didn’t know, and assert themselves as part of a political party.  Some of the members of our group referred to the Republican Party as though it were an entity outside of them.  They were at a Republican caucus but not yet comfortable as identifying as Republican.  I felt a little that way myself, even though I’ve been working for conservative causes for some time.  It was rather telling.

It would be natural for me to comment on our discussions at this point, but I will refrain.  This is an examination of what group dynamic existed and not a discourse on policy.  The group was quite informed on issues and our conversations were at times heated.  Unfortunately, much of what we talked about was those things we didn’t agree on.  Little was said about what we shared ideologically.  But, it was clear this group was motivated to oust those Democrats currently in power and to replace them with someone more conservative.  That was obvious.

Since this was such an unfamiliar group who hadn’t done this before, I believe our process wasn’t as clean and straight forward as it could have been.  It was very refreshing for a group of people who were new to the process to get their views heard without censor.  Knowing we could openly discuss conservative beliefs without some leftist caterwauling was a nice change.  We voted on party platform suggestions without rancor or deep dispute.  In spite of being strangers in a strange land, it was a productive and enlightening evening.

Upon reflection, there are a couple of things the caucus experience taught me.  First, the common narrative of Republicans being old, white, male, and rich is downright absurd.  Of all the things our entire group was, that caricature certainly wasn’t present.  This is important to understand because for a political party to grow, it must be something people can identify with.  Human beings tend to congregate among those with whom they feel most comfortable.  We are usually most comfortable with others like us.  The tired, false narrative of Republicans as fat cat, cigar-chomping bosses or hayseed hick troglodytes is simply a smear job by the left and the political elite.  We were a very mixed group with one driving desire; to save our country from the policies that are hurting it.

The second thing I got from the caucus is this party is deeply fractured.  Not fractured by those supporting Santorum or Paul.  It is not split by the libertarians or social conservatives.  The Republican Party is alienated within itself.  Between the lies and mischaracterizations by the media about conservatives and the social void of a cohesive party structure in the city, Republicans are divided from each other.  Democrats have become very good at creating a socio-political cohesion of their members and allies.  Republicans, at least in the city, have not.

That is not to suggest this is anyone’s fault.  Blame isn’t what we need going forward; it is ideas.

To create socio-political cohesion, Republicans must think about a couple of things.  How do we ‘fix’ the brand name?  How do we connect our supporters together into a kind of network that supports our ideas and spreads our message?  Now, I know many party regulars at this point are ready to throw me into the lake.  They have built networks of people in their area.  They have brand identification that isn’t sullied.  That is great and I applaud those who have done so.  But, we need to build up our membership and network all over, in the city, in the country, in all suburban areas.

So, I propose two things to get started.  First, we should take advantage of newcomers to things like caucuses to revitalize membership.  We never really talked about the things the group agreed with as Republicans, or neophyte party supporters.  Part of the discussion should be those political ideas that unite us.  Starting the caucus with saying the Pledge of Allegiance was a good thing.  I found it quite heartwarming.  But, then when our group convened it was a discussion about delegates, candidates, party planks, and our differences on those things.  We never got to talk about why we were there which was ostensibly to kick out Obama and as many progressive/socialists as we can.  We never really created any social cohesion and at the end, we shook hands and drifted out into the night back to our own lives.

I understand the caucuses are not designed to be party rallies and social gatherings.  But, I believe injecting a bit of that into the mix could help create some connections.  Those connections would become networks along which human interaction would grow and thrive.  Developing rapport among one another is crucial for building relationships that will support our cause and spread our message.

I think we should also consider other kinds of activities for party members.  I don’t know enough election law to determine what these could be, but the Democrats have us all out-gunned on creating socio-political support groups.  We have groups which support conservative causes but there isn’t enough interaction or coordination.  Is there a way we could do more outreach into communities?  Can we make more forays into community events, not just as a political entity but as charitable arms identified with the party?  Republicans and conservatives believe deeply in volunteerism and helping others without using the government.  Perhaps there are ways we could openly practice that ideal more in the public eye.

I have to say I was deeply moved by the experience.  I will continue working with and in the Republican Party, hopefully making it a more vital part of the state.  My impressions of the caucuses were overall very positive.  I do like to learn from any situation I find myself in.  Perhaps my little navel-gazing exercise may have some ideas we can use as a group.  I came away from this meeting with the two impressions I had of the caucuses.  I am extremely proud to be affiliated with a group that is interesting and informed.  I found the party to be an incredibly diverse group of people with great ideas, interests, and hopes for this nation.  We just need to make sure everybody knows what we’re really like, and not what the common narrative makes us out to be.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com

Greetings fellow webactivists.

I am seeking to catch up, and then pass the Democrats in high tech GOTV (Get Out The Vote) activities.

Believe it or not… Crowd Sourcing is a new (or repackaged) method to gather ideas.

So here is the Stated Goal:

To write a comprehensive technological plan with links, explanations, methods, and FAQ’s for Republican candidates to use.

To get to this goal we need to talk bar code readers, mobile credit card readers, smart phones, data banks, new map services, social networking, auto texting, mailing lists, forums, and more.

So your mission, if you accept, is to help put together our collective knowledge.

Obama has the lead in this arena… let’s work to reverse this. He has smart phones with drawn up maps of previous donors and credit card readers. He has a huge twitter following, and updates people with text’s sent to their phones.

I am a forward thinker… I know I can do a smaller version on my own… but our collective knowledge easily can make this effort… The most effective tool for Republicans ever

I live in Oregon… but today I stand with the Ohio Tea Party.

Ladies and Gentlement of the Ohio Tea Party, aka Patriots of the highest order.

Your establishment seeks to choke the lifeblood from our movement.

So as a concerned activist of Conservative causes I seek to help restore your strength.

I need.. no that is wrong… OHIO needs 30 volunteers to step up. I would prefer 3000 to send a message, but 30 will do.

You need to walk/drive/ski/fly/crawl/surf or whatever to your elections office and you need to sign up to run as a Precinct Committee Person.

This position in many States requires 3 votes to win. Yes 3!

Then you attend the vote for leadership of your State Party.

Send a clear message.

Then just try being involved in your Party. Be a force for change we can believe in!

Show them the Buckeye Spirit and clean house on them!

By Matt Rooney | Cross-posted at SaveJersey.com

It’d be a comical habit if it wasn’t also extremely counterproductive.

All contemporary Republican presidential hopefuls campaign with the words “Ronald” and “Reagan” ever-present on their lips.

Every conservative commentator passionately debates who is the most “reaganesque” member of the field.

A strong plurality of primary voters continually bemoan the absence of a “Reagan-like” GOP figure in the race.

Am I the only one who is utterly sick and tired of it? Or at least recognizes what O.R.D. (“Obsessive Reagan Disorder”) is doing to our party and our chances for victory?

It’s time to finally get serious, Save Jerseyans, and take affirmative steps to end the GOP’s unhealthy, all-consuming quest for “the next” Ronald Reagan. The Gipper would want it that way. I’m sure of it.

In order to do so, we need to briefly discuss what he was, what he wasn’t, and finally come to terms with the REAL reason why we seem miss him so damn much…

Read More →

Former candidate and Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain made a surprise endorsement of candidate Newt Gingrich tonight at the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee Lincoln Day Dinner in West Palm Beach, Florida; according to The Shark Tank.

See Video Here.

Cain, who ended his presidential bid among allegations of infidelity on December 3, 2011; has kept up his public profile, keeping voters and pundits guessing as to who he will endorse, and when.

In a recent interview with conservative radio and television host Sean Hannity, Cain hinted that he will be endorsing a candidate soon, though it would come as a surprise and will be “unconventional.”

Meanwhile the Gingrich campaign and dinner organizers also gave the media hints to expect a big surprise endorsement at the dinner.

According to Chris Moody of Yahoo’s The Ticket, Cain told attendees:

“I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States! One of the biggest reasons is the fact that I know that Speaker Gingrich is a patriot, Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas and I also know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage grinder. I know what this sausage grinder is all about.”

Herman Cain left the presidential race after being accused of sexual harassment by numerous women who served under him while head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990’s. Although, never admitting guilt, Cain was unable to credibly rebut the claims against him, and saw his lead in national polls quickly slip away. He cited the pain that the accusations were causing his wife and family as the main reason for his decision.

Cain appealed to many conservative voters because of his relationship with the Tea Party movement and his successful business career. He saw a surge in the polls primarily because of his innovative 9-9-9 tax plan; resonating with voters because of its simple, fair and innovative structure; besides its easily remembered handle. Mitt Romney, also a businessman, was edged out by Cain – because unlike Romney, who made his money in investment markets – Cain had a “main street” business background that appealed to small business owners having once revitalized the struggling Godfather’s Pizza chain from the ground up.

Significantly, Cain’s rise began in the state of Florida, then spilling over into South Carolina before becoming the national frontrunner. This endorsement comes at a critical time for Gingrich, who is looking to regain momentum after two undistinguished debate performances. Moreover, latest poll results show Romney’s newly acquired offensive strategy against Gingrich is paying off.

With this endorsement, Gingrich can now claim some economic credibility and a chance to absorb supporters whose value of a business experience moved them toward an uneasy support of Romney. Gingrich may also gain the few voters still left who are undecided by the exit of other candidates.

Unfortunately, Cain’s endorsement may have come too late to impact the race as much as he and Gingrich would like. Most Cain supporters had already gone to Gingrich and the other “not-Romneys” anyway. With no more debates left before the Florida primary, Gingrich also finds himself lacking the best medium to trumpet and contextualize this endorsement to the largest audience; moreover, network news coverage will be very limited since most weekend time-slots are already occupied by pre-recorded shows, making them inflexible to breaking news. Whether Gingrich could capitalize on this endorsement with so little time before the primary is uncertain, unless, of course, Monday’s media barrage to follow provides him with the exposure he missed during last week’s debates.

Follow Dmitriy Shapiro on Twitter @dmitriyshapiro

Admittedly, I may not have the strategic perspective of many… probably too focused on the ‘now’ with the accompanying emotional reactions.  However, the last few days of seemingly coordinated attacks on Newt leave me frustrated and depressed on many levels.

Never, in my memory and I’m 64, can I ever recall this sort of intra-party venom heaped on a fellow member, particularly one running for president.  Seems to me there can only be two explanations.

First, Newt is the most awful human being and Republican politician since Satan himself (yes, Satan was and is a pretty powerful political force; but, Satan is not necessary a Republican.)  Newt is a bomb-thrower for sure; erratic, at best; a SOB, who isn’t a times; and, intellectually incoherent at the most inopportune times…no doubt.  But can anyone argue that his conservative accomplishments are second only to what Reagan managed in the 1980s?  Newt’s means may be criticized, but not even the most hopelessly uniformed nitwit can reasonably argue that he didn’t deliver results.

Now, the other option which gains more and more credibility with me by the hour:  The ruling class of the Republican party is, indeed, more concerned about retaining their power and control than the welfare of the country.  The timing of the ruling class Republicans’ vicious accusations reeks of a carefully orchestrated, coordinated effort to insure their guy (Romney) wins in Florida, and beyond.  A half dozen or more of these ‘leaders’ of the party simultaneously undergoing a fit of self righteousness defies the laws of probability.  Remarkably, within a span of 48 hours, they, all of a sudden, can’t control their decades old heartfelt concerns about the dishonest, dishonorable and disloyal Newt.  They actually believe I’m as stupid as the the democrats do.

I’m certainly not knowing of how this whole sordid mess will play out, but my instincts are yelling at full volume. They tell me Obama will be reelected.  Prior to the last few days I thought that a possibility, but attributable to an increasingly ignorant and selfish electorate.  Today, if it happens, I’m convinced our Grand Old Party’s elitists must take the responsibility for the end of our country as we (at my age) grew up knowing it.

Damn shame.

The Republican Party’s loss in the last presidential election showed, I thought, the folly of our trying to win while ignoring the most potent and GOP-friendly of all social issues, and the inadequacy of our trying to end the liberals’ long-running judicial dictatorship on those social issues solely by promising to appoint only “strict constructionists” to the federal bench.

As we enter a new election year, nothing much has changed.  Our presidential candidates are continuing the GOP’s mystifying silence on the life-and-death social issue of crime and punishment, and their only new ideas for dealing with the activist courts have been slammed from both left and right as ill-conceived and ineffectual.

How those two issues — crime and the courts — relate to one another may be expressed very quickly:

● Americans overwhelmingly support the death penalty for murder, yet under rules invented and imposed on us by the Supreme Court, murder is hardly ever punished by death.

● Capital punishment has been shown to be a powerful deterrent when, and only when, it is actually enforced.

● Since 1960, more than 900,000 innocent people have been murdered in the United States.

● Many thousands of those lives, probably most of them, perhaps even the great majority of them, could have been saved if death for murder were the rule, rather than the extremely rare exception.

● Without corrective action, this massive and needless loss of innocent life will continue indefinitely.  Yet no one in our party is even talking about it, let alone doing something about it.

What follows is my attempt to fix that.  It was written shortly after Newt Gingrich unveiled his much-panned program for reining in the courts.

Among conservatives, the consensus regarding Gingrich v. the judiciary seems to be that Gingrich is right in saying liberal activist courts have overstepped their constitutional authority, right in viewing conservatives’ response to that as having been woefully inadequate, but wrong in his proposed solutions.  Starting there, it might be asked: Can better solutions be found?  The answer is most certainly yes.

Let’s define terms.  First, judicial activism is not (as implied by liberals when they decry “conservative judicial activism”) just a disposition to rock the boat.  It’s not a willingness to overturn precedent or to rule against the enactments of Congress or the actions of the executive branch.  Judicial activism is the interpretation of the Constitution, on points where its original meaning is clear, in a sense deliberately contrary to that meaning so as to obtain a result favored by the court.

Why prefer the Constitution’s original meaning over whatever meaning a judicial activist might give it?  Because only the original meaning reflects the will of “We the People.”  Allowing the Constitution to be changed by judicial usurpation — rather than by the people themselves through the amendment process — turns “We the People” into “We the Judges.”  It puts the courts above the Constitution, rather than keeping the constitution above the courts.

Second, the opposite of judicial activism is not “strict construction.”  That term derives from a 19th-century dispute over the meaning of the clause authorizing Congress to make “all laws which shall be necessary and proper” for carrying out its enumerated powers.  Chief Justice John Marshall opined in McCulloch v. Maryland that this clause gives Congress considerable discretion; his critics, dubbed “strict constructionists,” urged that it be taken more narrowly.  The controversy involved congressional, not judicial, freedom of action.  Both sides held that their interpretation reflected the Constitution’s original, true, ratified meaning.  Neither side asserted that judges are free to disregard that meaning and substitute new concepts of their own.

Judicial activism, therefore, is not effectively countered by promising to appoint only “strict constructionists” to the federal bench.  And it helps not one bit to say “originalist” instead of “strict constructionist.”  The object is to bring the courts back under the authority of the Constitution, to disable them from remaking it in the guise of interpreting it.  That object is not served merely by filling the courts with judges whose personal inclination is to accept the Constitution’s original meaning.  It is achieved only by obliging all judges to accept that original meaning, whether they want to or not.

Nor is judicial activism effectively countered by subjecting the judiciary to the harassments Gingrich proposes.  Dragging judges up Capitol Hill to be harangued by grandstanding congressmen, cutting their budgets and staff or abolishing their positions altogether, or simply ignoring their rulings and defying them to do anything about it — none of that is even politically feasible, let alone constitutionally defensible.

Judicial activism can be put down, however, if the people themselves will intervene in the activist-originalist dispute.  Let us devise a constitutional amendment setting forth originalism as the rule for all judges to follow, and by ratifying it the people will give judges their marching orders, rather than the other way around.  By thus reclaiming our right of self-government, we can sweep away judicial activism and all its ill effects.

Imagine an America in which Roe v. Wade has vanished like a bad dream; in which racial discrimination and “reverse discrimination” are equally outlawed; in which traditional expressions of public piety are no longer plagued by anti-Christian litigation; in which “gay marriage” is once again a laughable concept in law as well as fact; in which murderers are not set free on technicalities and effective measures can again be deployed to crush the crime wave that has tormented us since the 1960s. [1]  A single constitutional amendment can give us all that.

True, the amendment would need a specific clause to ban racial discrimination.  That’s because the people who gave us the 14th Amendment were segregationists. [2]  Their understanding of what that amendment means is not what most people would embrace today, yet “separate but equal” is closer to the amendment’s original meaning than Brown v. Board of Education is.  The overthrow of Jim Crow segregation is, indeed, the one good deed our judicial activists can boast of.  It also is, alas, the activists’ rationale for denying us our right of self-government in almost every other matter under the sun.  But it’s no big problem for us to keep the integration baby while throwing out the activist bathwater.

A bigger problem is how to handle the implied powers / enumerated powers conundrum.  A judiciary confronted with what undoubtedly would be dubbed a “Strict Construction Amendment” (no matter what we called it) might, on the “firemen first” principle, start throwing out all sorts of federal programs and departments on grounds they’re unrelated to any powers enumerated in the Constitution.  While we might be glad to see some of those things go — ObamaCare, for example, may well get the judicial heave-ho this year, even without our amendment — others would be sorely missed.  No amendment will get anywhere if it arguably might interfere with popular services ranging from  Social Security to national parks, disaster relief and even the Air Force.  So whatever we come up with would need to include some sort of language to protect such programs as those.

It might also be advisable to “incorporate” at least some of the provisions of the federal Bill of Rights into the 14th Amendment’s limitations on state and local power.  Americans take it for granted that freedom of speech, for example, can’t be interfered with by government at any level, and we’d need to respect that.  Federal courts have long been incorporating the Bill of Rights on their own, of course.  They unfortunately have also been transmogrifying those rights into things unrecognizable to Americans of any previous generation.  The trick for our amendment’s “incorporation” clause would be to preserve the one process while reversing the other.

Special attention would also need to be paid to law enforcement.  Much of what the Supreme Court has done there is clearly activist, and its death penalty interdiction, in particular, has had a deadly effect: By impairing deterrence it has doomed hundreds of thousands of murder victims.  Nevertheless, the 14th Amendment’s “due process” clause does, in its original meaning, put the federal government in charge of state and local law enforcement to some degree, and the Warren Court’s revolution in criminal justice procedure — devastating as it was to crime victims from the ’60s onward — could be seen as less an example of judicial usurpation than one of exceedingly bad judgment.  If our amendment is to be of any use in the restoration of law and order, then, it would need to give the courts some badly needed guidance in that area.

Much trouble as devising such an amendment might be, it’s worth it if we can thereby regain control over such issues as abortion, pornography, gay rights, school prayer and, most importantly, crime and punishment.  And the good news is that the meat of the amendment can be composed entirely from principles expressed by our Founding Fathers.

George Washington in his Farewell Address stated that the Constitution, “till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.”  He emphasized that constitutional change comes only through the amendment process.  “Let there be no change by usurpation,” he warned, “for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

Thomas Jefferson promised as president that the Constitution “shall be administered by me according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people at the time of its adoption.”

James Madison agreed: “I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation.  In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution.  And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful, exercise of its powers.”

Like Washington, Madison urged that constitutional change come only through amendment.  “A regular mode of making proper alterations has been providently inserted in the Constitution itself,” he wrote.  “It is anxiously to be wished, therefore, that no innovations may take place in other modes, one of which would be a constructive assumption of powers never meant to be granted.”

Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist No. 81, promised the Constitution’s ratifiers that they’d never come under the judges’ thumb. “The supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority … is in reality a phantom,” he wrote.  “Particular misconstructions and contraventions of the legislature may now and then happen; but they can never be so extensive as to amount to an inconvenience, or in any sensible degree to affect the order of the political system.”

What made Hamilton so sure of that?  He cited Congress’s power of impeachment as his guarantee.  This “important constitutional check,” he wrote, “is alone a complete security.  There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of [Congress], while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption by degrading them from their stations.”

And even John Marshall (who as a member of the Virginia ratifying convention is a Founding Father as well as our greatest chief justice) sang the originalist tune.  “Judicial power, as contradistinguished from the power of the laws, has no existence,” he wrote.  “Courts are the mere instruments of the law, and can will nothing.  …  Judicial power is never exercised for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the judge; always for the purpose of giving effect to the will of the legislature; or, in other words, to the will of the law.”

Marshall’s most famous words come from McCulloch v. Maryland: “We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding, … a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.”  Those words have been cited ever since as a call for judicial activism.  But when Madison and others accused Marshall of exactly that, he emphatically denied it.  In newspaper essays defending McCulloch, he wrote that the “intended to endure for ages” passage “does not contain the most distant allusion to any extension by construction of the powers of Congress.  Its sole object is to remind us that a constitution cannot possibly enumerate the means by which the powers of government are to be carried into execution.  …  The [Supreme Court’s] power of deciding, in a last resort, all questions ‘arising under the constitution and laws’ of the United States … cannot be the assertion of a right to change that instrument.”

Marshall’s defense of McCulloch v. Maryland was lost to history until rediscovered by Stanford Law Professor Gerald Gunther in 1969, but his rejection of judicial activism has been evident all along.  From the bench, he held “that the intention of the instrument must prevail; that its provisions are neither to be restricted into insignificance nor extended to objects not comprehended in them nor contemplated by its framers.”

In today’s terms, then, Marshall was a “strict constructionist” — and he himself said as much: “What do gentlemen mean by a strict construction?   If they contend only against that enlarged construction which would extend words beyond their natural and obvious import, we might question the application of the term, but should not controvert the principle.”

In defense of McCulloch, Marshall wrote: “There is certainly a medium between that restricted sense which confines the meaning of words to narrower limits than the common understanding of the world affixes to them, and that extended sense which would stretch them beyond their obvious import.  There is a fair construction which gives to language the sense in which it is used, and interprets an instrument according to its true intention.  It is this medium, this fair construction that the Supreme Court has taken for its guide.”

A title for our amendment!  We can call it the Fair Construction Amendment in Marshall’s honor.

Chapter and verse for these quotations are on the Sources page at  www.fairamendment.us.  They can be worked into a constitutional amendment in any number of ways, but here’s how my version goes:

Section 1:  The Judiciary of the United States shall not presume to exercise non-judicial power.

This Constitution is changed only by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people.  The sense in which it was accepted and ratified by the nation shall be the guide in expounding it, precedents to the contrary notwithstanding.  Its provisions are neither to be restricted into insignificance nor extended beyond the natural and obvious meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people at the time of its adoption.  Any faults it may contain are to be corrected by amendment as prescribed in Article V, not by usurpation.

Disregard of these principles is cause for impeachment.

Section 2:  No one in the United States shall be either subject to or entitled to discrimination in education, employment, housing, or public accommodations on account of race.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this section by appropriate legislation.

Section 3:  The provisions of this Constitution’s first article of amendment shall apply to the states as well as to the United States; but in every other respect, they shall be expounded according to the rules set forth in Section 1 of this article.

Section 4:  So that the perpetrators of violent crimes may meet with swift and certain retribution, the courts’ effort to protect them in their rights shall not be perverted into permitting any mere technicality to avert or delay their punishment.  Rules governing law enforcement shall be so designed as to protect the individual without imposing a disproportionate loss of protection on society.

Section 5:  The Congress shall have power to …

Whether expressed in general terms or as a supplementary list of enumerated powers, Section 5 would need to carefully avoid destroying all limits on federal power.  Likewise, Section 2 would need to hold the line at race, and not allow the full array of special civil rights categories to be tacked on, thus smuggling gay rights. the ERA and God knows what else into the Constitution.

As for Section 4, though its wording may sound odd, it makes use of the same technique as Section 1: It’s based on the writings of people who can’t be “borked” — in this case, Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Cardozo, C.S. Lewis and Belgium’s World War I hero Désiré Cardinal Mercier.  (Again, see the Sources page at  www.fairamendment.us.)  The idea is to get the amendment’s opponents into an argument with those gentlemen, and with the Founding Fathers, rather than with someone like Gingrich who can be easily demonized.

An amendment like this could be of great use to any of the Republican presidential contenders, especially if linked to the potent but neglected social issue of crime and punishment. [3]  It could add weight to Gingrich’s critique of the courts, or it could help Rick Santorum’s campaign catch fire at last.  And if the nomination goes in the end to Mitt Romney, it could be a means of drawing conservatives to him as he has not yet been able to do.  It could even capture the imagination of Ron Paul fans or of any others on the right who might otherwise be tempted to support a destructive and self-defeating third-party candidacy.

If this solution doesn’t pan out, there may be others.  In any case, let’s not go into yet another presidential election with the same lame response to the liberals’ long-running judicial dictatorship on the social issues.  Let’s seek something more than a tired, familiar and too often fruitless promise to appoint only “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Karl Spence is author of Yo! Liberals! You Call This Progress?  His work
has appeared in the Chattanooga Free Press, American Thinker and National Review.

1.  Although the Great Crime Wave crested in the early 1990s, it is still with us.  Crime rates remain, per capita, almost twice what they were in 1960.  The sole exception is murder, which has been greatly reduced by  advances in medicine.  More victims of murderous attacks are being saved in ER now, and each one saved reduces a murder to an aggravated assault.  Accordingly, aggravated assault remains almost three times its 1960 rate.

2.  See Raoul Berger, Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, Second Edition  (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1997), pp. 132-154.  Berger maintains that the Brown decision was, as historian Richard Kluger called it, “simple justice.”  But he demonstrates beyond dispute that such justice is not what the framers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment had in mind.  At the time the amendment was adopted, eight Northern states provided for segregated schools either statewide or as a local option, and five Northern states excluded colored children from their public schools altogether.  School segregation was the rule in the District of Columbia, over which Congress had direct authority.   The legislative history of the 14th Amendment and of the related Civil Rights Act of 1866 shows clearly that Congress had no intention of disturbing such arrangements.

3.  For more on crime and presidential politics, go here and here.

Liberal moderators of recent GOP debates have gone to great lengths to keep the candidates attacking each other and steer the discussion away from uncomfortable topics like the economy, the budget and the debt ceiling. George Snuffleupagus, Diane Sawyer, John King and Brian Williams have set the bar pretty high, so Wolf Blitzer will have to get very creative at the CNN debate in Jacksonville. Here are some questions Wolf can use to keep the focus off of Obama:

1. Do you think any of your opponents were beat up on the playground as a child? If so, why?
2. Newt said beet sugar is more important than cane sugar. Why would he say that? Which type of sugar do you think is more important?
3. Does Mitt Romney use the same hair gel as Jon Edwards? If so, should that disqualify him?
4. Where do you stand on contraception in gay households in states that don’t permit gay marriage?
5. If we can solve the problem of illegal aliens by relying on them to do self-deportation, can we also cut police department staffing and rely on self-arresting criminals?
6. Terri Schiavo died 7 years ago, but I don’t think Brian Williams fully explored the issue in the last debate. Do you think her parents had more right to make her medical decisions than her husband?
7. When Jeb Bush was Governor of Florida, he frequently held press conferences in both English and Spanish. Should we be conducting this debate in Spanish?
8. If elected President, would you have Margaritas in the White House served with or without salt?
9. Is it culturally sensitive for FSU to have the Seminole as their mascot?
10. Mitt—you hired undocumented workers as gardeners. Should all gardeners in Florida be subjected to self-deportation?
11. The University of North Florida doesn’t have a football team. Is that fair?
12. There is a famous photo of an alligator and an anaconda that got in a fight in the Everglades. Should the photographer who took the photo lose his health insurance for trespassing on federal property?
13. Should dependent children of undocumented workers be allowed to vote without showing ID?
14. Should Che Guevarra have been self-deported?
15. Boxers or briefs?