ConservativeHome's The Republican

The herd thins as the debate shows it is a two-man race between Gingrich and Romney

John Rossomando  
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WASHINGTON - The top thing that struck me last night as I was sitting at D.C.'s Constitution Hall watching the blows of the CNN/AEI/Heritage Foundation GOP national security debate was that the race really is now between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The other candidates with the exception of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman seemed to either have bumper-sticker answers that lacked depth. 

Huntsman summarized the debate with one sentence: “Today we have a president who can't lead. We have a Congress that can't even figure out how to balance our budget. They need term limits, by the way. We've gotta get our house in order… We've gotta get our house in order if we're gonna expect to get anything done overseas because when our light shines we can influence the rest of the world.”

And what was true four years ago when Hillary Clinton chided Barack Obama about being ready for that 3 a.m. phone call is still true today.

The presidency isn’t just a matter of domestic issues, but it means being able to defend the nation and promote its economic interests abroad.

So it comes down to the question, "Who has the breadth of experience, understanding, and depth to pull the nation away from the brink of disaster?"

Gingrich seemed to have a decisive command of the issues, such as when former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, now an important figure at the Heritage Foundation, asked him what he thought of the Patriot Act.

“I think it's desperately important that we preserve your right to be innocent until proven guilty, if it's a matter of criminal law. But if you're trying to find somebody who may have a nuclear weapon that they are trying to bring into an American city, I think you want to use every tool that you can possibly use to gather the intelligence,” Gingrich said.  “The Patriot Act has clearly been a key part of that. And I think looking at it carefully and extending it and building an honest understanding that all of us will be in danger for the rest of our lives.

“This is not going to end in the short run. And we need to be prepared to protect ourselves from those who, if they could, would not just kill us individually, but would take out entire cities.”

The best defense Ron Paul could mount was quibbling over the legal definition of what a war is. But the founding fathers, for example, never once wrote that states or localities needed a congressional declaration of war to fight off Indian raids, which would be probably the closest 18^th century equivalent of al-Qaida terrorism.

War isn’t what it once was when the enemy was a nation-state like the Soviet Union and you had millions of troops on the other side of the Iron Curtain wearing uniforms.

Cain’s responses to the questions during the debate only served to further discredit his candidacy.

Comments like: “No, Blitz. That's oversimplifying it. I happen to believe that if -- if you allow our intelligence agencies to do their job they can come up with an approach - I'm sorry, Blitz, I meant Wolf, OK?” make it seem Cain doesn’t understand the seriousness of the office he is running for.

This along with other answers that made it seem he doesn’t have a deep understanding of the issues at hand made the hitherto Romney, Cain, Gingrich matchup seem more like Romney and Gingrich are the only candidates with a chance.

Romney hit particularly hard against suggestions that the United States cut and run in Afghanistan.

“We spent about $450 billion so far, 1,700 or so service men and women have lost their lives there, and many tens of thousands have been wounded. Our effort there is to keep Afghanistan from becoming a launching point for terror against the United States. We can't just write off a major part of the world,” Romney said. “This is not time for America to cut and run. We have been in for 10 years. We are winding down. The Afghan troops are picking up the capacity to secure their country. And the mission is pretty straightforward, and that is to allow the Afghan people to have a sovereign nation not taken over by the Taliban.”

Clearly at this late stage in the pre-primary season, it appears only Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have the depth and understanding to compete with President Obama next fall. The others are good people, but they are just not ready to be President of the United States of America, and Obama would destroy them.

So will it be the visionary leader or the manager who GOP voters choose as their nominee? That is the question that should be on voters' minds.

Paul Ryan showed courage by voting NO on the Balanced Budget Amendment

John Rossomando  
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The major press outlets looked with dismay Friday as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan cast one of four Republicans to cast a vote against the Balanced Budget Amendment proposed by Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

And the press accounts almost ignored the concerns that Ryan and other conservatives had with the amendment’s failure to cap spending as a percentage of GDP. The proposed amendment could have created a situation where the courts, not Congress and the president, could have intervened to hike taxes.

Boehner and the GOP placed political expediency over principle. It is refreshing to see Mr. Ryan placing his principles first

Ryan released the following statement after the vote:

“I’m concerned that this version will lead to a much bigger government fueled by more taxes.  Spending is the problem, yet this version of the Balanced Budget Amendment makes it more likely taxes will be raised, government will grow, and economic freedom will be diminished. Without a limit on government spending, I cannot support this Amendment.”

The budget chairman is to be commended for putting principle over politics, especially for someone of his stature.

Conservative groups such as Americans for Tax Reform and Let Freedom Ring had been pushing hard to keep the weak balanced-budget amendment from coming to the floor.

ATR put out the following statement  before the vote:

Washington must learn to live within its means. A Balanced Budget Amendment should keep the focus on Washington’s overspending problem. Passing a BBA that allows a tax hike by a simple majority, however, will allow lawmakers to balance their budgets on the backs of taxpayers, rather than forcing Congress to rein in spending.

 Washington has an overspending problem, not an under-taxing problem. Historically, outlays have averaged about 21 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while revenues have amounted to about 18 percent of GDP. Due to the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats’ spending binge, outlays now average almost 25 percent of GDP, and are projected to stay around 23 percent in perpetuity.

 Unless tax hikes are taken off the table, reckless lawmakers will increase taxes to pay for these new bloated spending levels, instead of bringing spending in line with revenues.

Any lawmaker concerned about restoring American solvency cannot seriously vote for a BBA that does not include a super-majority requirement for tax increases. To pass a BBA that allows a tax hike by simple majority is to distract from the real problem of government spending, and leave taxpayers to bear the burden of foolhardy federal budgeting.

After the vote, I received comments from a conservative Hill office explaining the problems with the amendment with the following warning:

"For the last 60 years, our country has taken 20 cents out of every single dollar made in America to pay for the federal government. When Liza’s my age, we will be scheduled to take about 42 cents out of every single dollar made in America just to pay for the current government at that time.

I asked the Congressional Budget Office what will the tax rates be on my children’s generation, you know when I’ve got grandkids running around. They ran all their numbers through their computers and gave me their answer. The lowest tax bracket, the 10 percent bracket, goes to 25 percent, middle income taxpayers get a tax rate of 63 percent, and the top tax rate, which is what 80 percent of all those businesses, those subchapter S corporations, those partnerships, that goes to 88 percent. Then the CBO said, this could have some negative effects on the economy at that time. So, even these bean counters in government have got this figured out.

We all know where we’re going. We all know that the growth of our government is on an incredible upward trajectory, which is driven almost totally because of entitlement programs, programs that are going bankrupt and in urgent need of reforming. ...

We’re going from 40 million retirees in America to 80 million retirees. These are what we call pay as you go programs. Current workers pay their taxes for current beneficiaries. We’ve got a 100 percent increase in our retirement population, but only a 17 percent increase in the working population following them. 10,000 people are retiring every single day today in America, and so we know that our government is on this enormous trajectory of growth. If we allow that growth to continue unchecked, if we don’t reform the spending programs that are driving that growth, and we have just a balanced budget then we will crank taxes up in this country to the likes we’ve never seen before, and we will not have that economic liberty, that kind of freedom and prosperity we’ve had that defined this country, which have made our country the most prosperous nation in the world.

 So a balanced budget amendment that simply says: have expenditures equal revenues. At worst we’ll split the difference, and we’ll go from taking 20 cents out of every dollar made in America, 20 percent of GDP, to 30 percent instead of 40 percent. Either way you go, you’re looking at European levels of size of government. We don’t want to get down that path.

 To me, the root cause of this problem is spending. It is not a revenue problem that we have in Washington; it’s a spending problem that we have."

Supercommittee's failure was in the cards from the start

John Rossomando  
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As I’ve been saying here for the past few months, the Supercommittee’s failure was a foredawn conclusion the second John Boehner and Barack Obama announced its creation.

Republicans and Democrats have never been as ideologically polarized as they are today. In the past, both parties had ranks of centrists who would cross and vote with the other side. If Ronald Reagan had faced a Congress with the ideological balance of the 112^th Congress in 1981, his landmark tax cuts would never have passed.

Although Ronald Reagan controlled the Senate in reverse of today’s situation, he found he could rely on conservative Democrats like then-Rep. Phil Gramm of Texas to get his plans through.

But the last several election cycles have winnowed the liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats as both parties have become increasingly ideological and less regional.

The Democrats’ ideological pull toward the far-left has been exemplified in its embrace of Occupy Wall Street, which has been openly organized by hard-left communists. Consequently, the formerly liberal, now radical, Democrats are ideologically hardened in their support for government welfare programs regardless of the consequences.

The two parties’ reaction to the national debt passing $15 trillion for the first time in history brought this stark reality home. The days when Democrats worked for balanced-budgets and reforming government are over.

The Supercommittee’s inevitable failure will be blamable on the left’s religious addiction to bureaucracy and welfare programs that pay the bureaucrats far better than the recipients.

The GOP deserves its share of the blame too because irresponsible spending during the Bush years undermined the party’s effectiveness in resisting the “tax-and-spend” liberals.

The truth is both sides are too ideologically polarized to work together now that the hard-leftists have replaced the softer leftists like Bill Clinton who occasionally was able to work with conservatives to make a deal.

This polarization is evident in Sen. Pat Toomey’s comments to Politico:

“There are fundamentally and deeply held views across the American political spectrum and here in Congress,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a member of the supercommittee, told POLITICO on Thursday. “If this were easy, this would have been done a long time ago.”

Congress enters silly season as the national debt passes $15T

John Rossomando    
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Fifteen years ago, House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer pontificated about how the nation’s then $5 trillion debt threatened his daughter’s well-being and that of his grandkids at a Jan. 1995 press conference defending the balanced-budget amendment.

But now as the national debt passes a then-unimaginable $15 trillion, Hoyer and the Democrats have entered into silly season by opposing any sort of balanced-budget amendment. Instead of taking the situation seriously, they continue to advocate for uncontrolled reckless spending.

And the GOP isn’t far behind them because House leaders like Speaker John Boehner have caved going back to their pledge to cut $100 billion from the federal budget. But CBO found they only ended up cutting out a meager $353 million in last spring’s budget deal.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has stood alone among the Republican leadership as a voice crying in the wilderness about the need to take this debt explosion seriously.

Mr. Ryan stated the following last night in a press release:

“Instead of advancing credible solutions, the president remains committed to more borrowing, more spending, and more taxes. When it comes to making the tough decisions necessary to deal with our debt, the President is deferring to one commission after another, only to ignore the recommendations of these commissions. And his party’s leaders in the United States Senate? Well, it has been over 930 days since they passed a budget.

I think the reason is pretty simple: the president and his party’s leaders remain unwilling to publicly commit to the kinds of tax increases that their spending appetite requires.

“You deserve a lot better than that. You deserve a credible plan. You deserve leaders willing to tackle this problem, willing to advance solutions that would lift this crushing burden of debt and make possible a growing, prosperous economy.

That is exactly what we here in the House of Representatives have done, and we will continue to advance serious solutions that match the magnitude of our greatest challenges.”

Sure things are hard when the GOP controls 1/3 of the 1/3 of the federal government, but the party has done a terrible job in the public-relations war let alone in holding the line with Obama.

And instead of Republicans forcing the Democrats to compromise, The Hill greeted readers with the headline: “Hensarling says GOP willing to consider Dem tax proposals.”

The Republican co-chairman of the deficit-reduction Supercommittee on Wednesday indicated he and his party were willing to listen to proposals from Democrats to consider higher taxes to reduce the deficit.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) walked back a statement he made Tuesday on television, when he said Republicans “have gone as far as we feel we can go” by offering to raise $250 billion in new tax revenues.

The GOP won the House last year on the promise that it would end business as usual, but Republicans have failed to deliver during the negotiation process.

The Democrats need to stop for a second and see the results of their failed fiscal policies as RSC Chairman Jim Jordan observes:

“The national debt is nearly equal in size to our entire economy and growing larger every single day. Unless we make the fundamental changes needed to stop the out-of-control spending, you can look at Greece and Italy to see where this road ends.”

And presidential candidate Herman Cain's campaign chimed in with comments to ConservativeHome USA saying:

"Our national debt has exceeded $15 trillion – including a $4 trillion spending-binge during the Obama presidency. Obama’s failed leadership and flawed Keynesian economic philosophy has driven the American economy not into the proverbial ditch but off the cliff.  In order to renew America’s economic prospects we need bold solutions and a leader with a proven record of turning around dysfunctional business enterprises.

 “President Obama’s disastrous economic policies are not only an economic travesty, they are immoral.  We cannot leave our children and grandchildren with this enormous burden. We must take responsibility for our actions."

Gingrich is the GOP's comeback kid

John Rossomando  
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Newt Gingrich might have a lot of skeletons in his closet and have made questionable personal decisions in the past. But he has one thing, he’s a known commodity who has a degree of depth and imaginativeness that his opponents lack. Unlike a lot of other candidates, he's already been vetted. But he needs to learn from his mistakes and those of his fellow candidates.

Herman Cain’s self-destructive loose lips and inability to give the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel cogent about Libya and collective bargaining reveal him to be a political lightweight, if not a nice guy on a personal level. I’ll say he’s the latter, having spoken with him 1-on-1, but as the American Spectator’s Ross Kaminski observes:

“No doubt, Herman Cain's performance on the Libya question was the low point of his interview and his answers to some other questions were better, but they were not all good -- and certainly not good enough. Like it or not, this is a job interview where you're judged by your biggest weaknesses, not your average over the entire range of questions -- not that he even averaged a B-minus. And even on the questions where Cain does better than on foreign policy, he comes across too frequently as parroting talking points rather than answering from a true and deep understanding of the issues of the day.”

Then you have Romney alternatives like Gov. Rick Perry who have similar problems conveying basic ideas beyond a superficial level.

I put my money on Gingrich early on, but looked elsewhere as his campaign seemed to self-destruct. But as Craig Shirley told The Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis, the Gingrich of 2012 is not unlike Richard Nixon was in 1968 when he came back from losing to JFK in 1960 after everyone had discounted him:

“We are witnessing one of the greatest–if not the greatest–political comebacks in American History.

It is a story rich in irony (remember the consultants who left Newt for Perry?) and personality durability. In the end, Gingrich’s durability might be one of his greatest assets, like Clinton’s and Nixon’s and Reagan’s resilience was for them. Clinton, Nixon and Reagan all staged dramatic comebacks as well. All were pronounced politically dead by the intelligentsia but they had other ideas, as does Gingrich.

It is also a story about how the elites have finally and completely walled themselves off from the American people and thus from reality. I mean, these people are proclaiming Romney all but the nominee when every conservative I know loathes the idea of him as the nominee.

Newt will run an unconventional campaign to say the least, but he is the only Republican of the past 40 years other than Ronald Reagan to successfully deliver on his promises. He’s the best on the stage at the moment.

If Republicans want to nominate someone with a track record for success and for getting things done, then Newt is the only Republican presidential candidate who has shown he delivers on promises.

Protest Justice Kagan's conflict of interest on Obamacare

John Rossomando 
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It’s official. Obamacare is headed for the U.S. Supreme Court just in time for the 2012 presidential election. The outcome will affect the nation for decades to come. But Justice Elena Kagan has a big conflict of interest in this case.

She argued on behalf of Obamacare as Obama’s Solicitor General. On March 21, 2010 just before Obamacare passed the House, Kagan had an e-mail exchange with famed liberal Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe bragging that the Democrats had enough votes to pass the bill.

And as CNSNews.com Editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey wrote in a piece that appeared on the site on November 10, 2011:

According to 28 USC 455, a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The law also says a justice must recuse anytime he has “expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” while he “served in governmental employment.”

Justice Kagan lacks the impartiality needed to fairly judge whether or not the federal government has the constitutional authority to force Americans to buy health insurance or any other commodity for that matter.

Next year, the Supreme Court decision will have a huge impact on the presidential race as Committee for Justice Executive Director Curt Levey observes:

“If the Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare in its entirety, it will be seen as a victory for President Obama and Congressional Democrats, which would likely provide them with some electoral momentum. On the other hand, such a decision by the Court would throw responsibility for reforming ObamaCare entirely on the shoulders of the new Congress and President, thus making it an even bigger election issue. That might be bad news for Democrats given ObamaCare's continual poor showing in the polls.

 Conversely, if the High Court strikes down ObamaCare in its entirety, it would be a victory for Republicans, giving them the electoral momentum, but at the same time largely depriving them of one of their best election issues.”

Conservatives need to sign up and get behind the letter being sent to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith by groups such as Let Freedom Ring, Eagle Forum, and the Traditional Values Coalition.

The letter contends that:

“… Justice Kagan participated as an attorney in preparing the defense of the PPACA.  As such, the law mandates two separate reasons why she must recuse herself from ruling on any cases involving the PPACA.  First, 28 U.S.C. § 455(b)(3) mandates that a judge or justice recuse themselves if the justice has “served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, advisor or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.” 

The evidence indicates that, at a minimum, Justice Kagan participated in the defense of PPACA as counsel.  Second, 28 U.S.C. § 455(a) mandates that a judge or justice recuse herself if her “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”  For all the reasons discussed above, a reasonable person would certainly have sufficient basis to question the impartiality of Justice Kagan if she were permitted to prepare the defense of a case as an advocate and then switch roles and judge the defense of that same case as a justice.”

Take a stand and contact the House Judiciary Committee to voice your support for a hearing into Justice Kagan’s conduct.

The Democrats' war on religion threatens freedom of conscience

John Rossomando 
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The push toward the institutionalization of homosexuality by the state amounts to a repudiation of the American Revolution’s accommodation between faith and public life because it requires millions of Americans to violate their consciences. Under the American Revolution, conscience reigned supreme and the government could not tell any American what to believe or what to think.

But the Roman Catholic acting archbishop of  Denver James Conley warned according Lifesite:

“America today is becoming what I would call an atheocracy — a society that is actively hostile to religious faith and religious believers. And I might add — the faith that our society is most hostile toward is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular,” he said.

Conley noted that, because such an anti-faith movement has as its basis no solid ethical principles, it is a particularly dangerous force. “Hence, it has no foundation upon which to establish justice, secure true freedom, or to constrain tyrants,” said the bishop, who pointed to Roe v. Wade as the perfect example of how the amoral principle of “the violence of the strong against the weak” is allowed to triumph.

Freedom of conscience is the basis of the free exercise clause, and government may not penalize or discriminate against an individual or a group of individuals because of their religious views nor may it compel persons to affirm any particular beliefs.

However,  feminist and gay extremists and their allies on the left have increasingly reinterpreted our nation’s laws regarding religious freedom and freedom of conscience in the light of the French Revolution to require the Catholic Church to violate its beliefs.

Alexander Hamilton observed in 1794  that:

“In the early periods of the French Revolution, a warm zeal for its success was in this Country a sentiment truly universal. The love of Liberty is here the ruling passion of the Citizens of the United States pervading every class animating every bosom. As long therefore as the Revolution of France bore the marks of being the cause of liberty it united all hearts and centered all opinions. But this unanimity of approbation has been for a considerable time decreasing. … It is not among the least perplexing phenomena of the present times, that a people like that of the United States—exemplary for humanity and moderation surpassed by no other in the love of order and a knowledge of the true principles of liberty, distinguished for purity of morals and a just reverence for Religion should so long persevere in partiality for a state of things the most cruel sanguinary and violent that ever stained the annals of mankind, a state of things which annihilates the foundations of social order and true liberty, confounds all moral distinctions and substitutes to the mild & beneficent religion of the Gospel a gloomy, persecuting and desolating atheism.”

Our democracy was founded on the basis of being free to believe as one desires without coercion. The Obama administration’s refusal to grant people of faith conscience protections on abortion, its effort to tell religious groups who it must or must not consider clergy and its stance on homosexuality shows its faith in the French Revolution rather than the American.

And polls reflect the Democrats’ hostility toward and ignorance of Christian beliefs and practices.

“A Gallup poll released Monday highlights the religious spilt between Democrats and Republicans, showing that 52 percent of Democrats seldom or never attend church. And the percentage of Democrats who attend church weekly has dropped two percentage points – down from 29 to 27 percent – since the first quarter of 2008.”

And things have gotten so bad that the Catholic bishops have begun to circle the wagons by forming a body solely devoted to preserving religious freedom.

As blogger David Crocket writes in the Trinitonian blog:

The contemporary assault on conscience is a perverse inversion of this theme, for it is nothing less than an assault on those who think differently, supposedly the hallmark of the tolerance agenda. And if government can violate freedom of conscience in this area, it won’t take long for the thought police to explore other targets of opportunity.

Conservatives have an obligation to take a stand for the freedom of conscience. Perhaps a start might be pressuring Congress and the state legislatures to pass James Madison’s original language for the First Amendment, which read to reaffirm it:

"The Civil Rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, nor on any pretext infringed. No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases."

Take a stand against the left's effort to impose the values of the French Revolution on America.

An indecent proposal: GOP moderates push a "naked" balanced budget amendment

John Rossomando 
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Next week could see Republicans adopting an indecent proposal as the House Republicans bring what some big-time conservative activists are calling the “naked balanced-budget amendment” the floor for a vote.

Republicans have been grappling over which version to adopt since the summer. Moderates such as Rep. Bob Goodlatte have lined up behind pushing the “naked” or “clean” BBA that has conservative leaders worried it could cause the courts to raise taxes.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey muses in a Friday blog posting that:

“What makes Option B “clean”?  No spending caps, no supermajority requirement, and essentially no controls over Congressional tax-and-spend impulses.  Rep. Bob Goodlatte insists that this won’t result in massive tax increases, and says that the need to pass a BBA — any BBA — outweighs those concerns… Tax increases are already unpopular enough that even Democrats couldn’t push them through Congress when they controlled both chambers and the White House.  They knew that passing direct tax increases, as opposed to the hidden taxes in ObamaCare, would be political death.”

But conservative congressional leaders such as Sens. Jim DeMint, Mike Lee and Rand Paul on the Senate side and Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on the House side have been pushing for a stronger version.

They have been joined by a broad coalition of conservative groups led by Americans for Tax Reform, Let Freedom Ring and 60 Plus, which have sent a letter to Speaker Boehner demanding the defeat of the “naked” version.

This strong or fully-clothed version would cap total federal spending at between 18 and 20 percent of GDP.

Without such a spending cap or supermajority needed for raising taxes, Congress could still tax and spend with impunity.

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan also favors the stronger balanced budget amendment, not a meaningless, watered-down version that could serve as a fig leaf for Democrats who want to brag that they voted for balanced-budget amendment.

But the chances getting Democrats to vote for a balanced-budget amendment this year are far more remote than they were in 1995 when the current House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer got up before the cameras.

Back then Hoyer, who has rejected the balanced budget amendment this time around, pontificated that the nation’s the-$5 trillion national debt imperiled his daughter’s future. But this time he has reversed himself such that our current $15 trillion national debt is not that much of a big deal.

Either version of the balanced-budget amendment faces tall hurdles because it takes 290 votes in the House and 67 votes in the Senate, not to mention that three-quarters of the states need to ratify it.

A test vote in the Senate sponsored by Sen. Lee garnered 11 Democrats in addition to the 47 Republicans, which was nine votes short of what was needed for passage.

In 1995, 66 senators voted for the balanced budget amendment after it passed the House.

 But as Milton Friedman wrote in a 1983 column in Atlantic Magazine :

“…I have never supported an amendment directed solely at a balanced budget. I have written repeatedly that while I would prefer that the budget be balanced, I would rather have government spend $500 billion and run a deficit of $100 billion than have it spend $800 billion with a balanced budget. It matters greatly how the budget is balanced, whether by cutting spending or by raising taxes.”

GOP presidential candidates must take a stand against Obama's weak foreign policy

John Rossomando
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There’s no doubt that Barack Obama will be trying to get everyone to focus on the terrorist scalps he has collected since coming into office. Namely those of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Alwaki and the Mad Dog of the Middle East himself Muammar Gaddafi.

But save for Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, the rest of the GOP field is woefully unprepared for confronting Obama on the international stage.

Obama remains particularly vulnerable on the Middle East where his policies have encouraged the Muslim Brotherhood to foment revolution against our allies in the region such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak.

Now as my former colleague David Bedein writes in his blog Israel Behind the News regarding Egypt:

“Islamists will continue to attack Christians, whom the government and army won’t protect. The Brotherhood will complain that if only it was in charge and could implement a policy of hope and change everything would be great. Islamists and liberals will join together to bash the junta as anti-democratic and intending to keep power for itself.

The junta’s decision to create dual power-a military executive alongside an elected legislature-is understandable since it is horrified at the rise of Islamism and violence. But this is likely to be a turbulent situation.

Then there’s Naguib Sawiris, a billionaire, Christian, and the founder of the Free Egyptians’ Party, the only group that’s likely to fight Islamism. He has just given a fascinating interview to Bloomberg Business News.

The problem is that while the party has many Muslims in the leadership and membership (two-thirds, it claims) most of its votes will probably come from Christians, the only large sector of the population willing to battle for secularism.”

Then there’s Libya where al-Qaida battle flags flutter in the breeze above the Libyan national flag just as conservatives feared prior to Gaddafi’s fall.

Even liberals are starting to concede the naïve dream of democracy in the Middle East was a pipe dream. Mshari al-Zaydi writes in a posting on al-Arabiya:

“I recall how many Arab writers at the beginning of this year - the year of the Arab Spring - prophesied that what we were witnessing were uprisings staged by non-political civilians and youth, and claimed that not a single radical or ideological slogan was chanted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, or any other Arab public square.

 They said that this proves that the Arab regimes were lying to the world – and to the political elites who champion the idea of the civil state – when they said that should their regimes be toppled, this would result in Islamists and religious fundamentalists coming to power. Those who supported the Arab Spring always countered that this was nothing more than a lie fabricated by these regimes to remain in power, and that the Arab Spring youth had proved their mettle and their belief in civil values.

Now, these same well-intentioned writers – or at least many of them – have returned to warn against the Arab Spring being hijacked and despoiled. They have expressed their confusion about the presence and popularity of these radical Islamists who are overwhelming the political scene, and are asking: where did the Facebook youth go?”

Then there’s Iran, which has continued its push for nuclear weapons despite Barack Obama’s decision to play nice guy instead of continuing the evil Bush administration’s policies.

Hezbollah’s chief cleric Hassan Nasrallah warns that an Israeli attack against Iran will lead to a regional war, which means his terror group will serve as Iran’s main arm for a counterstrike against Israel.

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz quotes Nasrallah as saying:

“Nasrallah said that the "suicide attacks initiated by members of the resistance are those which created the force of both the resistance and Hezbollah in Lebanon."

"Israel will think twice before it attacks Lebanon since it knows well the kind of power the resistance and Hezbollah have in the country," the Hezbollah leader added during his speech at an event commemorating members of the militant group.”

Now will we stand with Israel or follow Barack Obama in insulting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the moment of Israel’s greatest peril?

We need to hear more in this presidential race about foreign policy than we have been hearing. It is make or break.

As Amb. John Bolton told  ConservativeHome back in September:

I think we need a president who can address not just the damage of four years of Obama, but we need to be brutally honest here – the last couple of years of the Bush administration did do us internationally and work to correct them.

 We need somebody who’s prepared to think in grand strategy terms of how you deal with a rising China.

 This might be a peaceful rise of China as some have said, but we need to be prepared for the opposite. And we’re not. Right now we’re not doing either one very effectively."

Poll confirms Republicans can win the Reagan Democrats

John Rossomando 
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A new poll suggests what I have been seeing and saying for the past couple of months. This is, Obama’s policies have put the socially conservative, if not economically liberal, blue-collar Reagan Democratic vote up for grabs.

The Republican National Committee released a statement last night saying:

“Last week USA Today and Gallup released the results of their first "Swing State Poll" conducted in 12 of the most important battleground states in next year's election. An ominous finding for the President is only 37% of voters in swing states feel they're better off today than they were when he was elected three years ago. And at a time when economic concerns dominate the political landscape, swing-state voters said a Republican candidate would do a better job handling the issues of the federal budget deficit and debt (+16%) and the issue of unemployment (+7%). It's important to note all 12 of these swing states were won by the President in 2008.”

This means places like Michigan and Pennsylvania where Obama faces must wins in 2012 are ripe for the picking as long as the Republican nominee speaks to their needs, as I wrote in an earlier blog http://conhomeusa.typepad.com/therepublican/2011/10/blue-collar-voters-gop-2012.html.

So far, only Rick Santorum is speaking to that constituency in the debates by talking about the need to reinvigorate American manufacturing and the need to provide opportunities to those without college educations.

If the other GOP candidates persist in staying in their ivory towers and ignore this constituency, it is not any different than having them walk up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW to hand Barack Obama the keys to the White House for another four years.

The Republican Party needs a coherent industrial policy and explain to this crucial bloc of voters what it will do to improve their lives beyond just saying it will cut their taxes. Many of them don’t pay taxes at this point, so that will not be a selling point.

Republican National Committeeman Saul Anuzis tells ConservativeHome:

"If Mitt Romney is the nominee, there is no question Michigan will be in play making Obama's road to the White House very difficult. Michigan is the quintessential battle ground state to run against Obama and his failed policies."

It’s time for a little creativity.