THE FOUNDATION
“Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 39, 1788
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
National Consensus Worked for Gun Control – Why Not Ebola?
The White House may be politicizing its Ebola response, but the Pentagon is treating the disease with appropriate caution. “Thirty soldiers until recently stationed in West Africa will be quarantined in Italy when they arrive Wednesday after leaving the Ebola-stricken region this morning,” CNNreports. “The soldiers will join Army Major General Darryl A. Williams, commander of U.S. Army Africa, and approximately 10 other personnel who are now in ‘controlled monitoring’ in Italy.” Meanwhile, the CDC says medical workers returning from West Africa need not be quarantined. If these workers were stuck with an infected needle, for example, they would be advised not to leave their homes, CDC says – other than maybe to take a jog around their neighborhood. A final note: As political analyst Charles Krauthammer observed, “There is now a national consensus … that if you return from [West Africa] … you can be in quarantine.” A “national consensus” was all it took for Barack Obama to push Second Amendment-infringing gun control. Why won’t he implement a simple quarantine for public health?
Opposing Obama’s Mass Amnesty
The Republican Party is setting the stage for a knock-down, drag-out fight on immigration after the election. Peter Kirsanow, a Republican who sits on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,wrote a letter to Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus saying mass amnesty will “devastate the black community” because both groups will compete for the same, low-skilled jobs. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said, “While I can’t speak for the legislature, I’m very confident we will stop that. We will do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen: Defunding, going to court, injunction. You name it. It’s wrong. It’s illegal. And for so many reasons, and just the basic fabric of this country, we can’t allow it to happen and we won’t let it happen.” Meanwhile, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services union made a statement calling the American people to petition the government to not allow mass amnesty if they value security. This is why the resistance to Obama’s move is so powerful: It’s coming from all sides.
America Packing to Leave Afghanistan
American troops are coming home from Afghanistan. U.S. Marines and British troops handed over control of Camp Leatherneck and Camp Bastion to the Afghanis on Sunday, officially bringing the Afghanistan campaign to a close. But, among other things, the resurgence of poppy fields threatens to undo much of the hard-fought gains. John Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, told the Senate in January, “All of the fragile gains we have made over the last 12 years on women’s issues, health, education, Rule of Law and governance are now, more than ever, in jeopardy of being wiped out by the narcotics trade which not only supports the insurgency, but also feeds organized crime and corruption.” American commanders express confidence that the Afghani military can protect its own country. However, with ISIL rampaging across Iraq, it’s highly probable the Obama administration is only repeating its mistakes.
Liberal States Have Confusing and Biased Tax Policies
Wyoming, South Dakota and Nevada have better tax climates than the rest of the nation, according to a study released by the Tax Foundation. In the 2015 State Business Tax Climate Index, the foundation found California, New York and New Jersey to be the worst states in terms of taxes – incidentally, all heavily Democrat states. “The absence of a major tax is a common factor among many of the top ten states,” the study said. “Property taxes and unemployment insurance taxes are levied in every state, but there are several states that do without one or more of the major taxes: the corporate tax, the individual income tax, or the sales tax. … The states in the bottom ten suffer from the same afflictions: complex, non-neutral taxes with comparatively high rates.” While the only inevitable things in life are death and taxes, clearly low-tax policy is linked to economic freedom and prosperity. More…
GOP Hasn’t Actually Sued the President
Remember when Republicans promised to sue the president over his unconstitutional delay of the ObamaCare employer mandate? Good times. Seems they’ve forgotten about it themselves. Politico reports, “House Speaker John Boehner came out swinging hard last June when he announced that his chamber would take President Barack Obama to court. The suit, charging that the president grossly exceeded his constitutional authority by failing to implement portions of the Obamacare law, was billed as an election-season rallying point for aggrieved Republicans. But days before the midterms, the House’s legal guns seem to have fallen silent. Lawyers close to the process said they originally expected the legal challenge to be filed in September, but now they don’t expect any action before the elections.” By the time Republicans get around to filing –if they get around to it – the employer mandate will be in effect and the entire issue a moot point. Republicans are possibly riding a wave to an election win, signaling that their incompetence is outdone only by that of Democrats. More…
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Clinton Says Businesses Don’t Create Jobs
While campaigning in Massachusetts for gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley, Hillary Clinton inadvertently revealed exactly how she views American free enterprise. During the rally, the soon-to-be presidential candidate declared, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, uh, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”
Oh how wrong she is.
After catching heat for sounding eerily reminiscent of Barak Obama and his infamous “you didn’t build that” line, Clinton clarified her comment. According to one of her aides, she had meant to “talk about tax breaks for corporations and businesses in that sentence, which led into a line about how trickle-down economics had ‘failed spectacularly’ – a sentiment she has long held.”
Despite that “clarification,” Clinton’s rhetoric on economic policy is in line with what the Left wants to hear. Supposing that Clinton will seek the Democrat nomination for president in 2016, she might have to contend with a challenge from her left by progressive populist Elizabeth Warren. According to columnist Timothy Carney, “Clinton is a corporatist,” while “Warren is a populist.” In order to head off Warren’s challenge, Clinton will have to say populist things.
In the same speech, Clinton derided the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, which were the main reason for the economic boom and prosperity enjoyed during her husband’s tenure. “Trickle-down economics,” she sneered, “failed rather spectacularly.”
The truth is just the opposite. Reagan successfully reversed Jimmy Carter’s economic malaise. Reagan wanted government to get out of the way so companies and individuals could prosper. To do that, he implemented massive tax reductions, deregulation and anti-inflation monetary policies, which brought inflation down to 3.2% by 1983 and unleashed a historic period of economic growth.
Instead of learning from the economic success during the Reagan years, however, Clinton advocates the opposite. If she wins the Democrat nomination and, heaven forbid, is elected president, we can expect a continuance of Obama’s failed economic policy. Yet she’ll no doubt say one of her goals will be to “fix” the economy, which has suffered immensely under Obama. That will require more skillful navigation than she has so far shown ability to accomplish.
She and her leftist cronies believe that one way to create jobs is by increasing the minimum wage. Clinton asserted, “Don’t let anybody tell you that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs. They always say that. My husband gave working families a raise in the 1990’s … and millions of jobs were created or paid better and more families were more secure.”
But the facts show otherwise. James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute notes, “From 1981 through 2007, the US economy created 50 million jobs. (Also the jobless rate fell from a high of 10.6% to 4.4%). Over that same time span, the minimum wage declined in value – using the consumer price index – by 30% since it only rose to $5.35 an hour from $3.35, while to stay even with CPI inflation it needed to rise to $8.43.” He further notes that, while the minimum wage was declining, there was an incredible surge of job growth, and median incomes rose by 40%.
Furthermore, the Congressional Budget Office released a report earlier this year projecting that Democrats' desired 40% minimum wage hike would kill 500,000 jobs.
Clinton didn’t touch on the issue of extending unemployment benefits. Perhaps she heard about a recent study showing that after extended jobless benefits were ended, “The number of new jobs that came open each month exploded by 20 percent to 4.7 million by June.”
One thing is certain from Clinton’s comments: She is a statist uninterested in laissez-faire economics. She advocates higher but job-killing wages coupled with higher taxes that will likewise kill jobs, all in service to the expanding power of the government. And, as yesterday marked the50th anniversary of Reagan’s ‘A Time for Choosing’ speech, it’s clear another such time is upon us.
Election Day Is One Week Away
A number of national polls and on-the-ground reports in key races indicate that the GOP may be headed for big gains in next week’s midterm elections. Sunday’s Wall Street Journal/NBC/Annenberg survey found that registered voters prefer a Republican-controlled Congress to a Democrat one 46% to 42%. The GOP also held an 11-point advantage among likely voters in the same poll. Can Republicans capitalize on Election Day?
The GOP is so emboldened by this recent trend that the party is expanding its investment into additional House races. Optimistic analysts believe Republicans are within striking distance of a 12-seat gain, which would match Republicans' post-World War II record of 246 seats.
Democrats long believed they would face tough prospects in 2014, but now their plight is nothing short of dire. Republican expansion into soft Democrat districts in Nevada, Iowa and Texas, among other states, has forced Democrats to shift resources to districts where they need to protect incumbents.
The reason is simple: Barack Obama’s popularity continues to shrink as his administration proves increasingly incompetent over the handling of the economy, ISIL, Ebola, immigration and a host of other issues. He is a weight around Democrats' necks.
Economist Thomas Sowell observes, “The great boxing champion Joe Louis once said about one of his opponents, who was known for his speed: ‘He can run but he can’t hide.’ In the Congressional elections this year, many Democrats are running away from Barack Obama, but they can’t hide their record of voting for Obama’s agenda more than 90 percent of the time.”
Indeed, running away from the president hasn’t helped. As Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) pointed out, every Democrat cast the “deciding vote” for ObamaCare. If she’s going down, she’s taking some colleagues with her.
Likewise, Democrats share the blame for bad economic policy that hampered recovery. Heck, even Joe Biden says, “The middle class has been left behind” over the last few years. That’s Obamanomics for you.
And their traditionally poor showing on the national security front is even more obvious with ISIL on the rise.
Obama’s policies, he helpfully reminded us all, “are on the ballot – every single one of them.”
The overall fundraising advantage Democrats held, gleefully reported by the Leftmedia in the last few months, is now of little consequence. Ads in the days leading up to the election are expensive, and those fundraising dollars aren’t going as far as they did in the summer – or even in September.
Prospects for Democrats in the Senate aren’t much better. Signs still point to a GOP takeover of the upper chamber, though pollsters and pundits aren’t as confident about what such a victory might look like. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is locked in a tight contest with Alison Lundergan Grimes, and Kansas incumbent Pat Roberts is still fighting a tough race against “Independent” Greg Orman, but Republicans look poised otherwise for solid gains.
A big issue of concern for Senate Democrats is the loss of women voters. Democrats depend on women to counter men, who largely vote Republican. This year, however, women are drifting away from the Democrat Party in key Senate races like Iowa, Arkansas and Colorado. Losing that voting bloc would be more than an embarrassment – it would be a devastating blow.
The rabid Left has endeavored to mobilize unmarried and minority women by ginning up issues like abortion, birth control, equal pay and other such phony elements of the so-called “war on women” plank. But success in these efforts may be hard to come by because these groups don’t often vote in large numbers in off-year elections.
Republicans may be enjoying an unusual advantage among women in some key Senate races, but they still face an upward climb to win the support of black voters. There are currently 39 states with no black Republican lawmaker on the state or federal level, and according to the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, of 671 black state legislators nationwide, only 13 are Republican.
Blacks accounted for 13% of the electorate in 2012, and, believe it or not, 37% self-identify as conservative, while 33% self-identify as liberal. Additionally, many black voters have expressed extreme disappointment in Obama. It seems all too clear that Republicans have an opportunity to bring more blacks into the ranks.
Last year, the Republican National Committee began a committed outreach to blacks, hoping to build a base of support in a non-election year rather than repeat the mistake of waiting until a few months before the election. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus made inroads, but there’s a long way to go. There are 17 black Republicans running for Congress this year, but only Utah’s Mia Love is likely to win.
Whatever successes Republicans can count in November, they and the country will be facing an executive onslaught from Obama that will test the very fabric of the Constitution.
The president has shifted a number of executive actions and decisions until after the midterm elections to try to limit the electoral damage for his party. But the scope and breadth of his plans are meant to do nothing less than relegate a Republican-led Congress to the back burner while he continues his plan to fundamentally transform America. Just to name a few, the nomination of Eric Holder’s replacement, amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, new EPA regulations that will cripple the energy industry, and a steep increase in health insurance rates all silently wait around the corner from Nov. 4.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
For more, visit Right Opinion.
OPINION IN BRIEF
Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992): “From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.”
Columnist Dennis Prager: “The Democratic Party cultivates singlehood, black anger at America, Latino separatism, victimhood, group grievance and dependency on government. Nor is this the only way in which Democrats do terrible damage to America. They are also tearing America apart, setting women against men (with such falsehoods as ‘the war on women,’ ‘the rape culture’ at American colleges, and the nonsense that ‘women are paid less for the same work’), blacks against whites, and Latinos against other Americans. They do this because the less women see men as an enemy, the less blacks regard whites as an enemy, and the more Latinos see themselves as Americans, the worse it is for Democrats. The Democratic Party has been become a wholly destructive force in this country. Even though you may not intend to, if you vote for any Democrat, you contribute to that damage.”
Columnist Thomas Sowell: “Too many intellectuals are too impressed with the fact that they know more than other people. Even if an intellectual knows more than anybody else, that is not the same as saying that he knows more than everybody else put together – which is what would be needed to justify substituting his judgment for that expressed by millions of others through the market or through the ballot box.”
Fred Thompson: “A new report shows that illegal poppy farming in Afghanistan is at an ‘all time high,’ despite the U.S. spending $7.6 billion trying to stop it. Maybe we should subsidize it instead. Stopped Solyndra cold.”
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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