Let's Hear It For The GOP!

From NewsWithViews.com

By Pastor Chuck Baldwin

I think it is time that we all stood up and gave the Republican Party a big round of applause. I mean, they have done us all a huge favor. By an overwhelming majority, the GOP has prevented a potential plague from enveloping these United States of America, and I think it is time that we acknowledged it. Yes, the GOP stopped a potential catastrophe. Without the combined efforts of millions of Republicans, there is no telling what kind of disaster might have ensued. Let’s hear it for the GOP! Hip Hip Hooray!

For a few minutes there, I thought the GOP might have lost its mind, but I am glad to report that all is well with the Republican Party. The international bankers and oil companies, and the military-industrial complex, as well as the presidents of Mexico and Canada, can breathe easy. With John McCain as the presumptive Republican nominee, the globalist power brokers who have dominated the last three Presidential administrations can know that they are still in charge. There will be no changing of the guard this November.

It was scary there for a while. You see, there was this kook who was running for the Republican nomination that had the potential to upset the applecart real good. But thankfully, the fine people within the GOP rose to the occasion and beat back the attempts of his nutty supporters to vault him to the nomination.

After all, just think what would have taken place if this kook Ron Paul had won the Republican nomination for President. This nut case actually believes that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Imagine that. That means he would never take America to war except with a Declaration of War by Congress. Think how such a thing would prevent America’s meddling and interventionism worldwide. Think of the billions and even trillions of tax dollars that would not need to be spent overseas. Think of how much money Halliburton would lose. Think of how much money the Federal Reserve bankers would lose by not being able to loan money to the U.S. government. It is too ghastly to think about.

Furthermore, this Ron Paul nut might have actually insisted that the federal government declare unborn babies to be “persons” under the law. Think of it. This would mean that every unborn baby would have the immediate protection of law. And this would have happened without the necessity of appointing a single Supreme Court justice. Whew! The Republican Party dodged a bullet on that one. Now they can continue to talk about being “pro-life” for the next thirty years in order to fool Christian conservatives into voting for them without having to actually do anything about it.

This Ron Paul kook would also have put a stop to the incessant spying on the American people by their own federal government. Egad! This Paul character would have set America back two hundred years. Think of it. No more illegal wiretaps. No more reading private emails, letters, and telegrams. No more harassment by the BATFE of law-abiding firearms dealers for honest errors in paperwork. No more using the wars on “terror” and “drugs” to violate the Fourth Amendment. Think of the money that would be lost by the feds not confiscating the private property of the American people.

In addition, if this Ron Paul nut had actually become President, he might have succeeded in abolishing the Internal Revenue Service and overturning the Sixteenth Amendment. Holy Horrors! Can you imagine the tragedy that would have ensued? No more income taxes. No more tax forms to fill out. No more IRS agents arresting hard-working citizens for “tax evasion.” No more government tracking of our private financial transactions. Think of the US attorneys whose services would no longer be necessary. Imagine that. The federal government would actually be required to live within its means; it could no longer raise taxes, because there would be no more taxes to raise.

And if all of the above is not bad enough, this Ron Paul kook would actually demand that the federal government obey the Tenth Amendment. This, all by itself, would reduce the size and scope of the federal government by at least fifty percent. Imagine if the American people suddenly had the federal government out of their pocketbooks and off their backs? What would they do with all that newfound freedom? It is too scary to contemplate.

Do not worry, however. Thanks to the fine men and women of the Republican Party, John McCain will carry their standard into the November elections. Yes, my dear friends, David Rockefeller and his fellow travelers at the Council on Foreign Relations can rest easy. Should McCain win the general election, they will retain their influence in the White House. Indeed, we can all rest easier knowing that John McCain will be the Republican nominee for President.

After all, John McCain will see to it that our borders and ports remain open to illegal aliens. In fact, a McCain Presidency will ensure that illegal aliens become permanent U.S. citizens. Or better yet, that the U.S. and Mexico will be merged into a North American Community, thus eliminating the need for U.S. citizenship altogether. This will greatly help the Chamber of Commerce and Big Business. Think of the money they can save by hiring cheap Mexican labor. Think of the plants and factories that can be moved to Mexico. Think of the cheap Chinese goods that can be loaded onto Mexican trucks from Mexican ports and shipped into the United States on the NAFTA superhighways.

And did I mention the advantage a John McCain Presidency will provide to incumbents in future elections? Because John McCain does not believe in the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment means nothing to him. This is good, because he can use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to promote his McCain/Feingold bill that would make it illegal for citizens to voice their concerns and opinions regarding the voting records of incumbents during a general election. That means those sinister organizations such as the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America will no longer be able to publicly promote their views regarding the anti-Second Amendment voting records of congressmen and senators.

That Ron Paul kook would never have tolerated such a law as McCain/Feingold. But thanks to the fine men and women of the Republican Party, we do not need to worry about these little inconveniences such as the First and Second Amendments (or any of the other articles within the Bill of Rights, for that matter), because they wisely selected John McCain to be their standard-bearer.

Furthermore, because the good men and women of the GOP decided to nominate John McCain, we can look forward to one hundred years of war in the Middle East. We can all anticipate the opportunity of sending our troops into harm’s way all over the world to promote the interests of international corporations, nation-building, and other U.N. machinations.

Had that nut Ron Paul been elected, he would have practiced a non-interventionist foreign policy. He would have sought peace with all nations. And, instead of preemptively invading foreign countries, he would have dealt constitutionally with terrorists, resulting in their capture or death, the protection of America, the absence of long-term war, and the respect of nations throughout the world. Furthermore, that nut Paul would have refused to use U.S. forces to do the bidding of the United Nations and other international entities.

However, we do not need to worry about old-fashioned, out-of-date ideas such as constitutional government, conservative principles, or common sense, because the fine men and women of the Republican Party wisely chose John McCain as their presumptive Presidential nominee. Yes, indeed. Let’s hear it for the GOP!

Chuck Baldwin is Founder-Pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida. In 1985 the church was recognized by President Ronald Reagan for its unusual growth and influence.

Dr. Baldwin is the host of a lively, hard-hitting syndicated radio talk show on the Genesis Communications Network called, “Chuck Baldwin Live” This is a daily, one hour long call-in show in which Dr. Baldwin addresses current event topics from a conservative Christian point of view. Pastor Baldwin writes weekly articles on the internet [1]

http://www.ChuckBaldwinLive.com and newspapers.

McCain Must Resist Increasingly Surreal Hubris of GOP Elites

From TownHall.com

By Gregg Jackson

This week Fred Barnes wrote an article in which he suggests that McCain's best VP choice is Mitt Romney.

Wow!

Mr. Barnes is correct that McCain's VP selection is vital because of McCain's age (71) and because McCain needs to select an authentic conservative with widespread appeal to the GOP base-Evangelical and Catholic Christians, millions of whom have started to gag on the regularly scheduled forced doses of the GOP's shut-up-and-do-as-you're-told concoctions.

Mr. Barnes believes Mitt Romney is exactly the man to get them to swallow yet another bitter dose.

Such a claim could only issue forth from the increasingly bizarre, even surreal, consensus in which the "conservative" elites -- pundits, consultants, lawyers and self-styled "pro-family" power brokers -- swim.

First, Mr. Barnes writes that McCain's VP should be acceptable to conservatives-especially social conservatives. Perhaps Mr. Barnes does not quite understand how right he is on this. It has long been apparent that among the conservative elites "pro-life" is merely a uniform that one puts on like a free agent ballplayer joining a team in search of a championship.

"You're now ‘pro-life,’ Mr. Romney? Why should we believe that?"

"Because I said so, and that ought to be proof enough. And only a fool would turn away a convert to the pro-life cause."

"Maybe so, Slick, and maybe not. But the question remains, why should we believe that?"

"Well, after my conversion to the pro-life side, with every bill that came across my desk I came down on the side of life."

"Hmmm. Well, does that include your massive government health care plan with which you delighted Ted Kennedy by establishing taxpayer-funded abortion on demand at fifty dollars a pop?"

"I thought Jay Sekulow, James Bopp, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins, Tom Minnery, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and the kids running the National Review had taken care of all that for me."

Mr. Barnes, like most of the chattering "conservative elites," has missed the glaring lesson of a Republican presidential primary in which millions of social conservative and constitutionalist voters just said no to all the RINOs the party nomenklatura stubbornly forced on them, preferring to pick from among the diverse options of Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, and Duncan Hunter. Does Barnes not grasp how much intellectual credibility and moral gravitas the "conservative" mandarins have squandered -- outside the beltway and away from the studio lights of Fox News?

McCain must select a running mate who is a credible opponent of abortion and who sees where we are being taken with the endless progression of political and constitutional concessions being made to appease the militant strategists of the obscenely overfunded global sodomy revolution. Behind the relentless waves of propaganda from the "conservative" political elites, the actual record of Willard Mitt Romney's record is that of a man who is best described as the GOP's Barak Obama.

Not only does the new, improved "pro-life" Willard Mitt Romney oppose a Federal Human Life Amendment, but as I've noted in numerous exposes here at townhall.com , he handed the abortion industry what no Democrat has by establishing abortion on demand with a $50 co-pay (after his stage-managed pro-life "awakening") as a "healthcare benefit". For those who have done the homework and know the Romney that Barnes dutifully (or naively?) whitewashes, it is no shock that his socialist healthcare plan was endorsed not only by Ted Kennedy but also by Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood.

The deeper one looks into the Romney closet the more disturbing the skeletons one finds. Notwithstanding an Orwellian cover-up by "conservative" mercenaries bribed and otherwise recruited to Romney's stable, the former governor also imposed homosexual "marriage" as governor in brazen violation of multiple articles of the Massachusetts Constitution, the exclusive authority of the Legislature and the marriage statutes. Lacking a constitutionally required enabling statute, he illegally ordered justices of the peace to perform homosexual "marriage" ceremonies or resign. In violating his oath to faithfully execute the statues and uphold the state constitution, he fulfilled a secret 2002 campaign promise to the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans.

Moreover, then Governor Romney unconstitutionally forced Catholic Charities, the nation's oldest adoption and foster care agency, to place children with homosexual couples or go out of business (which they eventually were forced to do). As even liberal Democrat former governor Mike Dukakis pointed out, the state law Romney claimed forced him to do this does not even exist! He similarly forced Catholic Hospitals to issue abortafacients, pretending again to be merely executing the law. Again Dukakis caught him lying red-handed.

Romney supports homosexual scout masters and sexual orientation non-discrimination laws that would penalize religious organizations and private businesses for not hiring transsexuals and cross dressers. The list of Obama-esque social policy decisions goes on and on, and is matched by aggressive lying about the law as governor in order to turn the social, moral and constitutional ratchet far to the left, while ruthlessly using Mormonism as a cloak to pass himself off as a reluctant conservative caught in one difficult position after another. In fact he became a master of creating elaborate smokescreens to cause conservatives to believe that he was fighting the radical policies he was pushing.

Does Mr. Barnes really believe that a Barak Obama in Republican clothing is acceptable to social conservatives? If so he needs to formulate a plan to break himself out of the surreal intellectual ghetto that three decades of hubris and brutally enforced consensus have created among the "conservative" elites. The grassroots increasingly see where we're headed and they’re getting off the train.

Barnes states that Romney would "shore up McCain's weakness on economic issues." He is correct that many economic conservatives who, despite McCain's recent support for making the Bush Tax Cuts permanent, reducing the corporate tax rate, and government spending, are wary of McCain's past opposition to the Bush Tax Cuts and support for carbon emissions "cap-and-trade" tax regimes.

But again, Barnes writes from the ghetto. Romney's actual record as governor shouldn’t instill confidence among fiscal conservatives. Romney did not support the Bush Tax Cuts (earning him praise from Massachusetts' neo-Marxist congressman Barney Frank). As governor, Romney increased taxes by $800 million (he cleverly called them "fees") which have truly harmed the Massachusetts economy. Romney's healthcare plan, in the words of the Wall St. Journal, is in "intensive care "with inflated costs that are estimated to double -- a plan he has said would serve as a model for a national plan.

Moreover, the absurd claim that a businessman has experience and expertise that directly applies to reforming by far the largest national economy on earth is not something that grownups ought to take even half-seriously. Romney has built vast personal wealth by cutting workforces, off-shoring jobs and aggressively marketing struggling firms as revitalized in order to sell them off to investors. This is known as short-term micro-economics. It has little if any relevance to macro-economics or long-term health of an economy or an industry -- which is exactly why Romney had to promise Michigan voters to rob taxpayers across America to prop up their dying manufacturing base, a promise that could just as easily have come from Barak Obama. As an "economic conservative" -- as much as a "social conservative"-- Slick Willard Romney is a snake oil salesman.

There is no doubt that McCain must choose an authentic fiscal conservative with a consistent track record of cutting taxes and spending, and implementing free market consumer-driven initiatives. Romney has no such record as governor. What McCain doesn't need is to select is a tax hiker whose signature economic "achievement" was an Orwellian pro-abortion healthcare plan endorsed by the Clinton-Kennedy- Planned Parenthood triumvirate.

Finally, Mr. Barnes argues that Romney has the support of many in the "Bush wing of the Republican Party" including Karl Rove and the Bushes themselves.

Like his friends over at the National Review, Fox News and other such lofty locations in the conservative ghetto, Mr. Barnes seems to have learned nothing at all from the last year. I don't know if he's noticed yet, but there seems to be a significant breakdown in communications between the GOP establishment and grass roots conservatives. Romney spent a king's ransom (100 million dollars, plus bribes and hush money for "conservative" and "pro-family" mercenaries) attempting to convince voters he was the second coming of Ronald Reagan. But many conservative voters rejected the screaming instructions from the self-appointed ghetto leadership, having figured out that Willard Mitt Romney is nothing more than Barak Obama in a Reagan costume. Candidates (McCain and Huckabee) adamantly opposed by the GOP elites, though vastly outspent, won the gold and silver respectively.

Voters have repudiated the "conservative" elites. Romney's support among the Bush nomenklatura is reason enough, all by itself, to reject him.


Gregg Jackson is a radio talk show host on WRKO in Boston and author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue By Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z."

McCain: How To Lose The White House

From WorldNetDaily
By Janet Folger

It doesn't really matter how "honored" Mitt Romney would be to be chosen as Sen. John McCain's running mate, because if Sen. McCain wants to be president, he won't pick Romney. In fact, the very best way to lose the White House is to pick Mitt Romney for vice president. Here are just a few reasons why.

1. Mitt Romney did two "post conversion" things the Clintons and Obamas only dream about:
   
   a. He ORDERED homosexual marriage, and

   b. He made abortion a tax-funded "health care benefit" in his state mandated socialized medicine plan.

2. On life and marriage, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.

3. He's billed as "Mr. Money," but he had to loan himself millions because he couldn't raise enough to run. Romney outspent Mike Huckabee by about 20 to one. If you want to spend 20 times more than you would if you picked Gov. Huckabee, Romney's your guy. According to the Los Angeles Times, he spent $98 million dollars ($42.3 million of his own money) and only won three primaries: Utah, Massachusetts and Michigan – his three "home" states.

   In a cost/delegate analysis, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.

4. According to Rasmussen, Romney has "the least core support" and "the most core opposition of all the leading candidates, Republican or Democrat." Nearly half of Americans, 47 percent, find Romney so politically repugnant that they say they will vote against him "no matter who else is on the ballot." Gallup Guru put it this way: "Romney is the 'only candidate with a more negative than positive ratio.'"

   When it comes to popular support, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.

5. The one who attacked John McCain in the campaign the most was none other than Mitt Romney. If you want a guy that will attack you in an effort to get ahead, Romney's your pick. McCain's response to that attack is seen on video, speaking of "One of a number of [Romney's] attacks." McCain himself points out: "As we've gone up in the polls the attacks have grown more … hysterical." By the way, it was Huckabee during the race who defended McCain, calling him a "true … American hero" and calling the Romney attack "desperate and dishonest."

   When it comes to a record of personal attack against Sen. McCain, there is no one worse than Mitt Romney.
   
   If you want to lose, there is a sure fire way to do that: Pick Mitt Romney or someone else who can't be trusted to defend the right to life and the institution of marriage. Someone who can't be trusted, period. As the Myths of Mitt Romney point out, Romney has trouble with the truth. Here are a few that have been documented:

1. Romney said his father marched with Martin Luther King Jr. He didn't.
2. Romney said he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. He didn't.
3. Romney said: "I have a gun of my own." He doesn't.
4. Romney said he was endorsed by the National Rifle Association. He wasn't.
5. Romney said he's been a hunter "all my life." Well, he hunted exactly "Twice." Once every forty years. In fact, according to public officials in four states where Romney lived, he never took out a license.
   
   Not only did he flip on every major social issue just before running for president, he wasn't even honest about it: Romney said both: "I wasn't pro-choice." and "I was pro-choice."

According to Rasmussen, the candidate of either party with the least hard-core opposition among American voters besides John McCain (at 33 percent) is …Gov. Mike Huckabee (at 34 percent). Rasmussen reports the only candidate (of either party) with as much hard-core opposition from American voters as Romney is Hillary Clinton (tied at 47 percent).

The numbers don't lie. Sen. McCain, there is one sure-fire way to lose the White House: Pick Mitt Romney.

I'm not telling you whom to pick, but if you want the vice presidential candidate who in addition to winning the "must win" states in the primary, who has the best cost/vote ratio, who has proven he can energize the base of the party, who defended (not attacked) you even before you won the nomination, who is honest, consistent and according to Rasmussen, has the least opposition among American voters, Mike Huckabee is your guy.

Ask him, I'm sure he would be honored to be your vice president, and I'm sure millions more would be honored to vote for you if you do.

The Gucci Chameleon is a Non-Starter

The Truth with Speedzzter blog provides an excellent "Executive Summary" on why John McCain should not pick the Latter Day Charlatan for his running mate.

Old habits die hard, particularly in an old man of 71, and John McCain has built a career by attacking conservatives in the Republican Party, but choosing Mitt Romney as a running mate will, as the Speedzzter points out, "overwhelmingly alienate at least 1/3 of the GOP base."

From the Right, He Looks Too Blue

From The Washington Post
By L. Brent Bozell

Think real conservatives will vote for John McCain? Don't count on it.

The conservative talk-show community? Don't mind them -- they're irrelevant.

This message from John McCain surrogates and other members of the political class is filling the airwaves and op-ed pages. In the Wall Street Journal, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes recently wrote that McCain needn't worry that conservatives are uncomfortable with his candidacy, because "while they love to grumble and grouse, conservatives tend to be loyal Republicans who wind up voting for their party's candidate."

In the same pages, novelist Mark Helprin, a former adviser to Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign, savaged conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin for daring to speak out against McCain. "Rather than playing recklessly with electoral politics by sabotaging their own party," he wrote, "each of these compulsive talkers might be a tad less self-righteous, look to the long run, discipline himself, suck it up, and be a man."

I know the conservative movement. I've been in the trenches fighting for an alphabet soup of conservative causes for 30 years. I've raised hundreds of millions of dollars for it. And I earnestly hope that McCain isn't listening to the advice he's getting from these folks. Their thinking betrays a fundamental misreading of the conservative pulse in America today.

Conservative leaders, particularly those in talk radio, cannot and will not be silent. They will not betray their principles and their audiences. Tens of millions of activists turn to them for guidance. These activists could be, and need to be, McCain's ground troops, but unless and until conservatives believe him -- and believe in him -- they will not work for his election. McCain may have the Beltway crowd in his corner, but grass-roots conservatives aren't sold.

Yet through his surrogates, McCain is attacking these leaders. This is beyond folly. It is political suicide.

For 20 years, the moderate establishment of the Republican Party has told conservatives to sit down, shut up and do as we're told. History shows that sometimes we bite the bullet. But not always. I absolutely guarantee that this year we cannot be taken for granted. This is a movement fed up with betrayals, and they've come one after the other.

Think back to 1988. Plenty of qualified conservatives -- Pete du Pont, Rep. Jack Kemp and Sen. Paul Laxalt, Pat Robertson (for evangelicals, anyway) -- were prepared to succeed President Ronald Reagan, but the GOP establishment, along with the professional political class, rallied around Vice President George H.W. Bush, an unthinkable proposition for conservatives just eight years earlier. After a listless campaign start, Bush finally energized the conservative base with his "No new taxes!" pledge at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans. We carried him to victory that November.

Within two years, he'd broken his promise and delivered one of the largest tax increases in history. His 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, which pleased conservatives, had been preemptively neutralized by his selection of the liberal David H. Souter in 1990. After brilliantly executing the 1991 Persian Gulf War, he squandered a 91 percent approval rating. He did nothing to advance the conservative cause. He did not cut taxes. He did not rein in federal spending and regulation. He did nothing for social and cultural issues.

By 1992, we who had dined at the table of Ronald Reagan had been banished to the GOP kitchen. As the National Review editorialized at the time, establishment Republicans "took conservative support for granted, reasoning from the dogma of the two-party system that disaffected conservatives had 'nowhere else to go.' " They were wrong. Some of us turned to Pat Buchanan, who disrupted the primary season. Others turned to independent candidate H. Ross Perot, who led the field until he imploded. Still others simply stayed home, and that November, Bush was soundly defeated by Bill Clinton.

Two years later, the "Contract With America" reversed the GOP's fortunes. With a reignited conservative base, Republicans captured both houses of Congress. But in the face of a liberal counterattack led by the national news media -- Time magazine's cover on Dec. 19, 1994, portrayed a snarling Newt Gingrich as Uncle Scrooge, and the cover of Newsweek's year-end double issue depicted a Dr. Seuss-esque cartoon of the House speaker smiling devilishly beside the headline "How the Gingrich Stole Christmas" -- Republican resistance crumbled. The Contract was abandoned, and overnight the Gingrich revolution was finished. We watched Republican "leaders" flee into the tall grass, whence they've never emerged.

In 1996, a new crop of conservative leaders presented themselves as presidential candidates, but again the party establishment would have none of Buchanan, Steve Forbes, Phil Gramm or Dan Quayle. Instead, they pooled their resources behind Dole, who offered nothing to energize the conservative base while the professional class confidently clucked that conservatives had "nowhere else to go." Again we stayed home. There was no enthusiasm for volunteer action. Again the moderate candidate was routed.

How disgruntled was the conservative base? Two years later, the GOP lost five seats in the House, the first time since 1822 that a party not in control of the White House had failed to gain seats in the midterm election of a president's second term.

But after eight years of Clinton's corruption, and facing the prospect of at least four more years with Al Gore at the helm, conservatives threw our support behind George W. Bush in 2000. He initially delivered by leading the charge in cutting taxes, and his political stature further increased when the nation rallied behind its commander in chief after Sept. 11, 2001. He won reelection in 2004 because conservatives stayed with him, delivering millions of volunteers committed to the defeat of Sen. John F. Kerry.

But any hopes that Bush would deliver on a conservative agenda in his second term evaporated almost immediately. We watched with growing fury as he and the GOP leadership promoted one liberal initiative after another. Finally, we openly rebelled, turning on the GOP over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, amnesty for illegal immigrants and the Republicans' shameless abandonment of fiscal discipline. What was once a powerful alliance between the Republican Party and grass-roots conservatives had become a political bridge to nowhere. With the GOP facing the loss of Congress in 2006, we shrugged in indifference. The movement that had "nowhere else to go" had gone.

And it has not returned.

How important are conservatives to the GOP? This year's Republican primary debate was dominated by one question: Which candidate was most qualified to carry the flag of Ronald Reagan?

Ironically, the man who survived this intramural scrum is the one who arguably least qualifies as a Reagan conservative. He claims to be a champion of freedom but gave us McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform -- which, by limiting free speech during elections, is perhaps the greatest infringement ever on the First Amendment. He claims to be a champion of U.S. sovereignty but offered us the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill that would give millions of illegal immigrants the chance to become citizens; that's amnesty, no matter how much he denies it. He claims to be a champion of the unborn but has waffled in the past, supporting federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. This year, he won the endorsement of Republicans for Choice. He claims to be a fiscal conservative who will make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but he also voted against them. These are serious issues.

What should McCain do? Saying he's not Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama will not be enough -- not this time. Repudiating positions that are anathema to conservatism won't be enough, either. The liberal base of the Democratic Party is on fire; he must bring an equal passion to the table with his conservative base. It is time for McCain to be Reagan.

This is what conservatives call on him to do:

McCain must present a strategy to defeat the threat of radical Islam. He needs to call on the United States to rebuild its military infrastructure, so devastated by the Clinton administration. He should secure our borders by a date certain. In every great struggle, the citizenry -- everyone, not just the country's military -- has been challenged to participate. McCain could make this the clarion call for volunteerism, for national service.

If McCain believes in freedom, he should promise to take the yoke off the American taxpayer. He has embraced making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Good. Now he should pledge to end the estate tax and lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent. In fact, he should call for an overhaul of the tax system. The flat tax or the fair tax -- either is preferable to the monstrosity that is the Internal Revenue Service.

The federal government is out of control. Conservatives don't want to hear talk about "reining in the growth of government." Those are empty words. McCain needs to call for the elimination of entire sectors of the federal leviathan. He should pledge to turn back to the states that which is their responsibility and which comes under their authority. We want to see how he will deregulate the private sector and how he will once again unleash the economic might of the United States. He should champion private retirement accounts and health savings accounts.

McCain should place the left on notice -- now -- that if elected, he will not tolerate congressional obstructionism of his nominations to the federal judiciary.

Our culture is decaying from within, and most Republicans have been shamefully AWOL on this issue. McCain could begin a national conversation about parents, not the state, taking responsibility for their children and their communities. He should call on the entertainment industry to stop polluting America's youth with its videos and its music and on the Internet. We wait to hear him call for the United States to honor the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage and family, and to return God to the public square.

If McCain offers this kind of vision, Washington elitists will scoff. But he should remember that they also scoffed and dismissed Ronald Reagan, all the way to his election. And his reelection.

Pat Buchanan: The Second Battle of NAFTA

By Patrick J. Buchanan

If Canada and Mexico do not renegotiate NAFTA, said Hillary Clinton in the Cleveland debate, she would “opt out” of the trade treaty that was the legislative altarpiece of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Barack agreed. NAFTA is renegotiated, or NAFTA is gone.

Barack went further. He has denounced “open trucking,” the feature of NAFTA whereby Mexican trucks are to be free to roam the United States and compete with the Teamsters of Jim Hoffa’s union, which just endorsed him.

The trade issue is back, big-time. For to blue-collar workers in industrial states like Ohio, NAFTA is a code word for betrayal — a sellout of them and their families to CEOs panting to move production out of the United States to cheap-labor countries like Mexico and China.

Our workers’ instincts are backed up by stats. In 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico soared 16 percent to $73 billion, a record. Mexico now ships more cars to us now than we ship to the world. And where did Mexico get an auto industry?

The U.S. trade deficit with China shot up 10 percent to $256 billion, the largest trade deficit ever between any two countries.

Charles MacMillion of MBG Services has run the numbers.

In manufactures, the United States had a trade deficit of $499 billion in 2007, a slight improvement over the $526 billion record in 2006. Yet that trade deficit in manufactured goods with the world is more than twice as large as our $224 billion bill for OPEC’s oil.

Under Bush, the U.S. trade deficit has doubled. Three million manufacturing jobs have vanished. And America has begun to run a trade deficit in advanced technology goods of more than $50 billion.

Our trade deficit in advanced technology goods with China is $67 billion, eight times what it is with Japan.

“Free trade is essential to the creation of high-paying quality jobs,” said Bush on Thursday. But if exports create jobs (and they do), imports displace them. And if we import half a trillion dollars more in manufactures than we export, is not Bush trade policy literally slaughtering industrial jobs?

Is there not a correlation between $4.3 trillion in trade deficits under Bush, the 3 million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush, the fall of the dollar by 50 percent against the euro under Bush and the resurgence of inflation, signaled by a quadrupling of the price of gold, under Bush?

Neither Hillary nor Obama has laid out a new trade-and-tax policy to deal with the de-industrialization of America and our deepening dependency on foreign technology, manufactures and the loans to pay for them. But at least they are listening to the country.

John McCain seems blind and deaf to the crisis. In Michigan, he informed autoworkers their “jobs are not coming back” and explained his philosophy: “I’m a student of history. Every time the United States has become protectionist … we’ve paid a very heavy price.”

This is ahistorical nonsense. From 1860 to 1913, the United States was the most protectionist nation on earth and produced the most awesome growth of any nation in history. In 1860, the U.S. economy was half of Britain’s; in 1913, more than twice Britain’s.

In 1920, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge won a landslide, cut income taxes from Wilson’s 69 percent to 25 percent and doubled tariffs. America went on a tear. When Coolidge went home in 1929, the United States was producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.

Who were America’s protectionists?

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison moved the Tariff Act of 1789 through Congress. Aided by Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, President Madison enacted the Tariff of 1816 to protect U.S. infant industries from British dumping.

Abraham Lincoln used Morrill Tariff revenue to fight the Civil War. The 11 GOP presidents who followed, from 1865 to 1929, all protectionists, made America the greatest industrial power in history, with a standard of living never before seen. Mocking protectionism, McCain is repudiating Republican history and all its achievements up to the era of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

America rose to power behind a Republican tariff wall. What has free trade wrought? Lost sovereignty. A sinking dollar. A hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing. Stagnant wages. Wives forced into the labor market to maintain the family income. Mass indebtedness to foreign nations, and a deepening dependency on foreign goods and borrowings to pay for them. We have sacrificed our country on the altar of this Moloch, the mythical Global Economy.

It took Rip Van Republican 20 years to wake up to the disaster of open borders and five years to realize the folly of igniting wars in which no vital interest was at risk. How long before the GOP wakes up to the reality that globalism is not conservatism, never was, but is a pillar of Wilsonian liberalism, in whose vineyards our faux conservatives now daily labor.

Bush Declares McCain "A True Conservative"

I don't know about you, but I am so reassured now that President Bush has declared John McCain "a true conservative." How could we have misjudged the man?

What a relief to know that we won't have to worry about massive new entitlement programs, a doubling of federal education spending, domestic snooping, unbridled government growth, runaway federal budgets, ballooning deficits, devalued currency, and Wilsonian foreign policy that would have Uncle Sam playing policeman, banker and Santa Claus to the entire world.

Is A Vote for John McCain a Mortal Sin?

"Sometimes party loyalty asks too much."

For Catholics, more than one quarter of the American electorate, the possible nomination of John McCain, as with the Democrats, would pose a serious moral dilemna. According to the Catholic Answers Voter Guide:

"there are five non-negotiable issues in current US political discourse: abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and human cloning. Catholics are told to 'find out where each candidate stands on each of these issues. Eliminate from consideration any candidate who is wrong on any of the five issues. Vote for one of the remaining candidates.'

Despite his claims to the contrary, the record of John McCain on pro-life issues, like so many of his positions, has been spotty at best. In the following video the Editor of CNS News tells the Catholic cable network, EWTN, that John McCain opposes the Republican pro-life plank, which is consistent with Catholic teaching, because it does not include rape and incest provisions.

Secondly, John McCain has been an adamant supporter of federal funding for embryo-killing stem cell research. He not only believes in the killing of persons created in an in vitro fertilization clinic, he supports the taxing of Catholics and others opposed to such research to pay for it.

Finally, McCain voted against a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Run a Democrat Against a Psuedo-Democrat and the Democrat Will Win

I will always be very proud to have worked for Senator Herman E. Talmadge of Georgia. He was recognized, even by his ideological opponents, as a brilliant, principled legislator, of considerable power and influence, who in a quiet, gentlemanly way, defended the Constitution, the principles of small, efficient, republican government, low taxes, balanced budgets, freedom and common sense. He even returned a significant percentage of campaign contributions to donors after his reelection campaigns. He left office the year Ronald Reagan became President, but having worked for Senator Talmadge, it was easy for this former Democrat to support Ronald Reagan and eventually become a Reagan Republican, because that great President espoused everything Herman E. Talmadge had stood for over the course of twenty-four years in the United States Senate.

In this interview made long after he retired, Senator Talmadge reflects on party rules that force Democrats to run so far to the left to get their party's nomination, they become unacceptable to the general electorate in November. That has generally been the pattern since 1972. In contrast, the Republican Party has met with success by putting forward conservatives much more in line with middle America. But will that be the case if the Republican Party nominates a man who has consistently used the rhetoric of the Left to attack the Republican Party, has toyed with the idea of changing his party affiliation and serving as John Kerry's running mate, and has routinely defied his Republican colleagues and crossed the aisle to cosponsor the legislative priorities of the most liberal Democrats?

When given a choice between a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican promising "less of the same," conservative Republicans and independents will stay home and the Democrat will win.

The Republican Party lost its ideological way during the Bush years. If political disaster is needed to recover bedrock principles and purpose, we could not do better than John McCain to drag all but our very best candidates down to defeat.

How the Clintons Will Destroy John McCain

Dr. Jack Wheeler, author of the To the Point blog, looks ahead in a recent post to the campaign we might expect in the tragic event that John McCain becomes the Republican nominee.

How the Clintons Will Destroy John McCain

Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler

Thursday, 31 January 2008

The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large. Some will admit it publicly, like Thad Cochran who says, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine." Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum, or Jim Inhofe. "The man is unhinged," one Senator told me. "He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief." That John McCain is clinically nuts is scary enough. What worries a small group of GOP Senators and Congressmen even more is a deep and dark skeletal secret in McCain's glorified past to which they are privy, and which the Clintons will use to blackmail him. They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for Translator. T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War. One of those prisoners was John McCain. The GRU -- Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije or Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet (now Russian) Armed Forces - operated the entire North Vietnamese prison system holding American prisoners of war. GRU officers, all of whom were Russians, oversaw the interrogation of every American POW. The interrogations themselves were conducted by Vietnamese who spoke some English. After each interrogation session, which could often include torturing the prisoners at the direction of the GRU officers, the Vietnamese interrogator would write a report of the session - in Vietnamese. These reports had to be translated into Russian. T, a bright teenager living in the GRU compound in Hanoi, had become fluent in Vietnamese, and ended up translating many of the reports and interrogators' notes. John McCain, flying his A-4 Skyhawk, was shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967. Badly injured from the ejection, he was beaten and abused by his captors. In July, 1968, his father, US Navy Admiral J. S. McCain, was made CINCPAC, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, commander of all US military forces in the Vietnam theatre. Upon learning this, the Vietnamese offered - according to McCain - to release him. McCain claims he refused, because he demanded all American POWs captured before him be released as well. He thus remained a prisoner when he could have gone home, and was subjected to constant brutal beatings and torture for years: that is the source of the "war-hero" saga making McCain a greater war-hero than any other American POW. Yet the offer of release would had to have been approved by the GRU overseers of the North Vietnamese - and T does not recall any such offer being made. T admits, however, that this took place before McCain was transferred to Hoa Loa prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the POWs. T had only direct knowledge of what happened at Hoa Loa, and not the other prisons, where T's father was in charge. McCain was kept at the Hanoi Hilton from December 1969 until his release, along with all the remaining POWs, in March of 1973. During this time, T translated all the Vietnamese interrogators' notes and reports regarding John McCain. According to T, they reveal that McCain had made an "accommodation" with his captors, and in exchange, T's father saw that he was provided with an apartment in Hanoi and the services of two prostitutes. Upon returning to his prison cell, he would say he had been held in solitary confinement. That may be why so many of his fellow prisoners said later they saw so little of him at Hoa Loa. The notes and reports written in Vietnamese were sent to Moscow, where T was a now a college student, for T's translation into Russian, then placed into GRU archives. That's where they stayed until 1991. Late that year, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the CIA and the GRU made a deal for a document swap. All of what it involved, T doesn't know. What T's father, by now retired but still with substantial contacts within the GRU, did learn (and thus T learned) was that the swap included all of T's translations. In other words, the CIA has in its possession the notes and reports of John McCain's interrogators at the Hanoi Hilton, in both the original Vietnamese and translated Russian, showing collaboration with his Communist captors. Allegations of this nature have been made over the years, many by Vietnam veterans. There is an even an organization, Vietnam Veterans Against McCain. But they are based on suspicions and circumstantial claims. There has never been any hard direct evidence. What T says the CIA has is such evidence. Its release would destroy McCain. The threat of its release could force McCain to take a fall, blow the election and lose on purpose. And just who do you suppose would know what the CIA has and work with them to release it? Someone who has been a CIA asset since he was recruited by London station chief Cord Meyer while a student at Oxford in 1968? (Back in the 90s years after he retired, if Cord drank a little too much Scotch, he would laugh derisively at those conspiratorialists who accused Bill Clinton of being connected with the KGB. "They all darkly point to Bill's participation in anti-war peace conferences in Stockholm and Oslo, and his trip to Leningrad, Moscow, and Prague while he was at Oxford. ‘Who could have paid for this?', they ask. ‘It had to be the KGB!' they claim." Cord would shake his head. "What rot - we paid for it. We recruited Bill the first week he was at Oxford. Bill's been an asset of The Three Bad Words ever since." Cord passed on in 2001.) The small group of Senators and Congressmen who have been briefed by T have been unable to confirm with the CIA any details of its document swap with the GRU beyond an admission that such a swap "may have happened." They are very nervous about pursuing the matter any further. The Clintons are not nervous. They are utterly ruthless, and have buddies at Langley all too happy to help them. It has been noted many times here in To The Point that while most folks think the CIA is a right-wing outfit, it is not. The CIA has been dominated by left-wing hyper-liberals for years. The CIA is a left-wing, liberal outfit, and its main job for some time now is not attacking America's enemies but conservatives in general and George W. Bush in particular. The story is best told by friend, Ken Timmerman in his new book Shadow Warriors. When the time is right, the Clintons will see to the leaking of the GRU archives on McCain to the media. Bet on it, just as you can bet they'll follow it up with media disclosures of the lady lobbyists in Washington having adulterous affairs with McCain. (There are at least three of them; I know the name of one but I'm not going to put it in writing.) Maybe McCain will try to fight back by confirming Hillary's well-known bisexuality and her lesbian affair with her beautiful assistant, Huma Abedin. Google "Hillary" and "Huma Abedin" and you'll get almost 6,000 hits. Turns out Huma is a Moslem who grew up in Saudi Arabia and is strongly suspected of working for Saudi intelligence. Or maybe he'll capitulate to Clinton blackmail. You never can tell what a psychologically unstable guy will do. And that last point is why - be prepared for this, folks - I would not in any circumstances vote for John McCain, not if either Hillary or Obama were the alternative. Evil is safer than crazy. Leftie amateur inexperience is safer than crazy. So I agree with Ann Coulter who says: "I'd rather deal with President Hillary than with President McCain. With Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal policies with none of the responsibility." How in the world can the Republican Party get saddled with a nutcase whack-job who knows nothing about economics, is so anti-capitalist he uses "profit" as a term of derision, has never run a business or had any job outside of government, will raise taxes, is so stupid that he believes "stopping global warming" is worth destroying the American economy, won't drill ANWR, won't appoint strict constructionist justices, won't protect marriage, will give amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens, is beloved by the New York Times, and lives in a delusionary world of vanity and rage? Rush is right. A McCain presidency will be the destruction of the Republican Party. It needs to be rebuilt, not wiped out with the field clear for the fascists of the left to consolidate power and eliminate freedom. And maybe the only way to rebuild it is in dedicated impassioned opposition to a Clinton White House. That should be the subject of Ann Coulter's next book. I've already got the title for her. Her last book was If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. Ann needs to now write this book: If Republicans Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans.

JOHN McCAIN AND THE NEW YORK TIMES - PERFECT TOGETHER

The New York Times endorsement of John McCain has left me feeling so warm and fuzzy I want to hug a tree, buy some Birkenstocks, read Jimmy Carter's memoirs, and workout with a Jane Fonda video. And Peggy Noonan thinks that George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party! How could that be when the Grey Lady herself is gushing about the likely Republican nominee?

Mr. McCain stood up for the humane treatment of prisoners and for a ban on torture. We said then that he was being conned by Mr. Bush, who had no intention of following the rules. But Mr. McCain took a stand, just as he did in recognizing the threat of global warming early. He has been a staunch advocate of campaign finance reform, working with Senator Russ Feingold, among the most liberal of Democrats, on groundbreaking legislation, just as he worked with Senator Edward Kennedy on immigration reform.

That doesn’t make him a moderate, but it makes him the best choice for the party’s presidential nomination.

John McCain vs. John McCain

THE JOHN McCAIN WAY: ATTACK REPUBLICANS

A Top Ten List ...

1. Defending His Amnesty Bill, Sen. McCain Lost His Temper And "Screamed, 'F*ck You!' At Texas Sen. John Cornyn" (R-TX). "Presidential hopeful John McCain - who has been dogged for years by questions about his volcanic temper - erupted in an angry, profanity-laced tirade at a fellow Republican senator, sources told The Post yesterday. In a heated dispute over immigration-law overhaul, McCain screamed, 'F--- you!' at Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who had been raising concerns about the legislation. 'This is chickens---stuff,' McCain snapped at Cornyn, according to several people in the room off the Senate floor Thursday. 'You've always been against this bill, and you're just trying to derail it.'" (Charles Hurt, "Raising McCain," New York Post, 5/19/07)

2. In 2000, Sen. McCain Ran An Attack Ad Comparing Then-Gov. George W. Bush To Bill Clinton. SEN. MCCAIN: "I guess it was bound to happen. Governor Bush's campaign is getting desperate, with a negative ad about me. The fact is, I'll use the surplus money to fix Social Security, cut your taxes and pay down the debt. Governor Bush uses all of the surplus for tax cuts, with not one new penny for Social Security or the debt. His ad twists the truth like Clinton. We're all pretty tired of that. As president, I'll be conservative and always tell you the truth. No matter what." (McCain 2000, Campaign Ad, 2/9/00; www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHoXkCprdL4)

3. Sen. McCain Repeatedly Called Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) An "A**hole", Causing A Fellow GOP Senator To Say, "I Didn't Want This Guy Anywhere Near A Trigger." "Why can't McCain win the votes of his own colleagues? To explain, a Republican senator tells this story: at a GOP meeting last fall, McCain erupted out of the blue at the respected Budget Committee chairman, Pete Domenici, saying, 'Only an a--hole would put together a budget like this.' Offended, Domenici stood up and gave a dignified, restrained speech about how in all his years in the Senate, through many heated debates, no one had ever called him that. Another senator might have taken the moment to check his temper. But McCain went on: 'I wouldn't call you an a--hole unless you really were an a--hole.' The Republican senator witnessing the scene had considered supporting McCain for president, but changed his mind. 'I decided,' the senator told Newsweek, 'I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger.'" (Evan Thomas, et al., "Senator Hothead," Newsweek, 2/21/00)

4. Sen. McCain Had A Heated Exchange With Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) And Called Him A "F*cking Jerk." "Senators are not used to having their intelligence or integrity challenged by another senator. 'Are you calling me stupid?' Sen. Chuck Grassley once inquired during a debate with McCain over the fate of the Vietnam MIAs, according to a source who was present. 'No,' replied McCain, 'I'm calling you a f---ing jerk!' (Grassley and McCain had no comment.)" (Evan Thomas, et al., "Senator Hothead," Newsweek, 2/21/00)

5. In 1995, Sen. McCain Had A "Scuffle" With 92-Year-Old Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) On The Senate Floor. "In January 1995, McCain was midway through an opening statement at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing when chairman Strom Thurmond asked, 'Is the senator about through?' McCain glared at Thurmond, thanked him for his 'courtesy' (translation: buzz off), and continued on. McCain later confronted Thurmond on the Senate floor. A scuffle ensued, and the two didn't part friends." (Harry Jaffe, "Senator Hothead," The Washingtonian, 2/97)

6. Sen. McCain Accused Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Of The "Most Egregious Incident" Of Corruption He Had Seen In The Senate. "It escalated when McCain reiterated the charges Oct. 10 in a cross-examination, calling McConnell's actions the 'most egregious incident' demonstrating the appearance of corruption he has ever seen in his Senate career." (Amy Keller, "Attacks Escalate In Depositions," Roll Call, 10/21/02)

7. Sen. McCain Attacked Christian Leaders And Republicans In A Blistering Speech During The 2000 Campaign. MCCAIN: "Unfortunately, Governor Bush is a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore. ... The political tactics of division and slander are not our values... They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country. Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right." (Sen. John McCain, Remarks, Virginia Beach, VA, 2/28/00)

8. Sen. McCain Attacked Vice President Cheney. MCCAIN: "The president listened too much to the Vice President ... Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was very badly served by both the Vice President and, most of all, the Secretary of Defense." (Roger Simon, "McCain Bashes Cheney Over Iraq Policy," The Politico, 1/24/07)

9. Celebrating His First Senate Election In 1986, Sen. McCain Screamed At And Harassed A Young Republican Volunteer. "It was election night 1986, and John McCain had just been elected to the U.S. Senate for the first time. Even so, he was not in a good mood. McCain was yelling at the top of his lungs and poking the chest of a young Republican volunteer who had set up a lectern that was too tall for the 5-foot-9 politician to be seen to advantage, according to a witness to the outburst. 'Here this poor guy is thinking he has done a good job, and he gets a new butt ripped because McCain didn't look good on television,' Jon Hinz told a reporter Thursday. At the time, Hinz was executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. ... Hinz said McCain's treatment of the young campaign worker in 1986 troubled him for years. 'There were an awful lot of people in the room,' Hinz recalled. 'You'd have to stick cotton in your ears not to hear it. He (McCain) was screaming at him, and he was red in the face. It wasn't right, and I was very upset at him.'" (Kris Mayes and Charles Kelly, "Stories Surface On Senator's Demeanor," The Arizona Republic, 11/5/99)

10. Sen. McCain "Publicly Abused" Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL). "[McCain] noted his propensity for passion but insisted that he doesn't 'insult anybody or fly off the handle or anything like that.' This is, quite simply, hogwash. McCain often insults people and flies off the handle... There have been the many times McCain has called reporters 'liars' and 'idiots' when they have had the audacity to ask him unpleasant, but pertinent, questions. McCain once... publicly abused Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama." (Editorial, "There's Something About McCain," The Austin American-Statesman, 1/24/07)