Slouching Toward the Apocalypse - Are Republicans Losing Their Way?

It looks to me like the GOP may be irredeemably divided. The liberal Republicans won't vote for a serious conservative like Jim Jordan and the conservatives won't vote for a RINO like Tom Emmer. The party seems stuck between 25 "radical" Republicans and 25 RINOs. At least that's how they think of each other. There are some 60 or 70 Republicans in the middle that seem eager to vote for anybody, just so they're a Republican. The divisions in the party threatens to push entire nation over the tipping point. 

 

Meanwhile, the Democrats are firmly aligned behind Hakeem Jeffries (and with a foreign sounding name like Hakeem who can blame them). The party of Jackson, Wilson, FDR, Johnson (and other assorted racists) has successfully raised virtue signaling to a fine art and a House Speaker with an Arabic name (though he's a Northern Baptist by religion), like a President named Barak, helps establish Democrat street cred as the anti-racists they aren't.    

 

The level of confusion on the Christian right may be another sign of the end. I am excluding the radical lunatic right, of course as they every bit the gadflies that the radical left are, but far less useful. They don't march on command after all.

The pope (Frances the Jesuit) is, I'm sure, still praying for the global government with teeth. Pope Benedict (a more direct sort of pontiff being German and all) called for in in his third papal encyclical and which has been firmly seconded by Frances. 

 

I'm not sure, though, who took charge of answering that particular prayer. After the chaos that will result from trying to corral free people into socialist collectives, I have my suspicions.

At any rate, the Congress is limited, for the time being, in its power to meddle in our lives. I count that as a positive in all of this. As Mark Twain said, probably borrowing the idea from some other pundit - he did that a lot:

 

© 2023 by Tom King

 

New Weapons/Old Tactics in America's Political Civil War.

The current back and forth artillery barrage of accusations of sexual abuse against virtually everybody was inevitable in the war on men by liberal feminists. Progressives chose sides and used the feminists as troops in their war on American free market capitalism and constitutional conservatives. In every war the enemy can potentially catch up with every weapon you deploy. 

Republicans finally figured out that the sex, drugs, rock n' roll lifestyle enjoyed by Democrats made them vulnerable to the same tactics the Dems were using against them. The death toll in this Political Civil War is going to be horrific. Every politician, particularly male ones, is a target. Soon, someone is going to remember all those scandals with female teachers hitting on boys and go looking after sexual skeletons in lady politicians' closets.

Because the parties are still married to old-style political strategies, they're going to be like the Civil War and WWI generals in the face of new weaponry. The slaughter is going to be horrific. Whoever has any serious sexual naughtiness in their past is terribly vulnerable if they take up a life in politics. Their past will catch up with them, whoever they are. Everyone is taking potshots at one another. It makes it almost impossible for a person of principle to do the right thing.

The only guys that will survive are the rare few people with spotless pasts who will fight to protect their reputations and guys with hides like a rhino like Donald Trump who know how to use the media like a weapon. This calls for citizens who are willing to run for office, serve a term or two and leave behind a legacy of good law and lean government. We need politicians who aren't primarily politicians, but are people who know how to do things and how things work and don't care about getting re-elected or accumulating power permanently.

Such a crop of people, Democrats and Republicans would change this nation. I have little hope of anything like that happening before the end of time, but it's a nice idea. We can pray for a remnant of warriors to stand for the right in the midst of the storm.  That's probably all we're going to get. We may lose this battle by the world's standards, but by all that's holy, we will make a magnificent fight of it.

© 2017 by Tom King

The TRUMPINATOR 5000. You Too Can Be a Trump Supporter!

Hello friends and neighbors. I'm Newt Gingrich. I'm not a smart man, but I pretend to be one on TV hoping to get a cabinet job if Trump gets elected.

Are you a conservative?  Hate Hillary Clinton, but having trouble swallowing Donald Trump as the Republican nominee? Well have I got good news for you.

Today, Trumpco Products has the answer for you and don't you want to know what it is?

It's the Trumpinator 5000! 

Yes, the exciting new Trumpinator 5000 is the perfect gift for yourself or, if you are already a Trump supporter, then, for all those of your principled conservative friends who refuse to climb on the Trump Train. 

It's fast, it's easy and it's fun. And let me show you how it works.

First, you place the head of the anti-Trump individual, the Cruzbot or #NEVERTRUMPer between the patented pans like so.

Note: We're using the simulated head of pesky conservative talk show host, Glenn Beck here because no matter how much money we offer him, he won't sell us Trump advertising and he keeps pointing out all the problems with Trump. And besides we never liked him because he doesn't intimidate when the RNC tries to lean on him. And boy would we like to get that melon between the patented pans!

With the head securely in place, simply take the patented Trumpinator 5000 persuader mallet and whack the pans until the individual stops talking and begins to drool. It's just that simple and don't you want to know how you can get one?

Now for just three easy payments to the RNC of $19.95, you can own the ultimate tool for "persuading" your friends or yourself to support Donald Trump with your votes and your money and your blind loyalty.

The Trumpinator 5000!

Get yours today. Don't be left out. Fun for the intellectually vapid and herd beasts of all ages.

Just call 1-800-Trumpinator today.

NOW YOU CAN MAKE ALL YOUR FRIENDS INTO TRUMP FOLLOWERS TOO!  

WITH THE TRUMPINATOR 5000

Order yours today.

© 2016 by Tom King

The Cuckoo's Egg & The Republican Suicide Pact

The Cuckoo is a wily sort of bird. It's name is synonymous with being crazy, but while the cuckoo presents as loud, flamboyant and aggressive, there is an evil method to her madness. The cuckoo is basically a thief. She frightens other birds from their nests with a great display of feathers and noise and then lays an egg in the nest among the other birds' own eggs. She then flies away and leaves her large noisy offspring to be hatched and raised by others. The cuckoo is the original advocate of using "other people's money" to enrich oneself. 

The comparison between the behavior of the cuckoo and the behavior of the presumptive Republican nominee is seriously disturbing. The progressive, socialist, big central government cuckoo has laid it's monstrous egg in the conservative nest. Either we push this foreign egg out of our nest or it will, as the cuckoo chick does, starve and eventually push out the little birds that make up the Republican Party. For those of you not paying attention, that would be bad....very bad!

One of the great problems with building a political party on principles like freeing the slaves, small decentralized government, limited federal responsibilities and strict constitutionalism is that you create a party that thinks independently. We Republicans are historically, not easily controlled by central authority (see Ronald Reagan). Republicans, especially those of the conservative stripe have a nasty tendency to think for themselves. Therefore, we are not easily led by our betters.

This election season the Democrats have brilliantly succeeded in planting a cuckoo's egg in the Republican nest. And just like the cuckoo chick, the Donald is going to push conservatives out of the nest and the Republican leadership is going to find itself feeding the insatiable power hungry Trump until they are exhausted, beaten down and without hope.

We have taken an imposter into our midst and when it's all over we'll be left with an empty nest and government-by-cuckoo.  The Republican primary has been co-opted by Democrats and reality TV fans. They have laid Donald Trump like an egg in our midst and somehow, most of us have not noticed. Instead we are about to nurture and feed a fool and fraud and the only candidate with worse negatives than Hillary as our flag-bearer. 

Pushed out by Cuckoo Donald, a third of the Republican Party at the very least and possibly many more than that, are about to be leave the nest, leaving the Party mama birds with a big fat, angry, hungry mouth to feed, and a mouth with no loyalty to it's parents. Trump has shown himself to be no conservative and has openly stated that he doesn't need conservatives to win. Conservatives will, I promise you, be deserting the party in large numbers. They already are starting to. What is truly incredible is that, out of a field of nearly 20 potential presidential nominees that was, if anything, an embarrassment of riches, we've been suckered into sitting on a proverbial cuckoo's egg and it is about to hatch with devastating consequences to the party and to the nation. 

When principled conservatives said, "Never Trump" we meant it. Most of us are Christians and we cannot find anywhere in Scripture that supports the "lesser of two evils" argument that the Party insists on making. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Should we vote for evil? A lot of us didn't vote for Romney or McCain and they were far more conservative in many ways than Trump.

If Trump is the guest of honor, the Party will not be well attended this November. That's a fact. Anyone who is ignoring the angry voices from the right is self-delusional. We've seen Trump before. He was a socialist and a nationalist and he wore a toothbrush mustache. Angry nationalistic big government socialists whose policies change on a whim have proven, in the past, to be bad for their countries. 

God help us if that awful man is elected.

© 2016 by Tom King

Vote for Republicans Because........Gerrymandering

With the gradual takeover of heartland states by Republicans, we've begun to hear a lot of Democrat whining about a process called "gerrymandering". Well given it's origins, all that whining is nothing, if not, disingenuous.  

Gerrymandering, refers to the process of slicing and dicing districts to favor the incumbent party. It's why some congressional districts look like they were designed by chimpanzees. Gerrymandering, as it turns out, is actually named for Massachusetts Governor Eldridge Gerry who, in the early 1800s, famously sliced up one voting district into such a contorted shape that it looked vaguely like a salamander and, of course, favored his own party. A clever pro-Federalist newsman conjured up the term "gerrymandering" for what he viewed as a shady redistricting practice.

Typical gerrymandered congressional district

Eldridge was a member of the fledgling Democratic-Republican party which later became (you guessed it) The Democrat Party. So, the game was actually invented by the Democrats who only cry foul when it's Republicans doing the "gerrymandering". Yahoo news complained a while back because Republicans were, quote, "good at it".

Odd that you don't hear the same complaint from the mainstream media when Democrats are doing it. You can expect to hear more complaints from the media about gerrymandering's unfairness if Republicans do well this fall, even if Donald Trump turns out to be a disaster.  If the Democrats take the field, however, you won't hear nary a word of complaint about the slicing and dicing of voting districts except, of course, from conservative media.

Even if I hate Donald Trump, I'll vote for the down ticket conservatives because whoever wins those contests gets to carve up the districts, whether you think that's fair or not. Neither party will do away with gerrymandering either because it's one of the spoils of victory and both sides are arrogant enough to believe that they will be the victor to whom such spoils will go. Besides a properly gerrymandered district can insure you have a long and rewarding political career - at least for yourself it will be rewarding. For taxpayers, not so much.

© 2016 by Tom King

REXIT! It's Time to Vote With Our Feet

I've been sending letters to the Republican rules committee asking them to support the Unruh proposal which would officially allow delegates to vote just their conscience at the upcoming convention. The only ones who have gotten back to me on it have all said, basically, "Thanks for your opinion, but here's why I'm supporting Trump."  All of the responses so far have pretty much followed the "lesser of two evils" line of reasoning which I've already explained why that's poor reasoning in previous blogs, so I won't bore you with it again. One respondent gave me a justification for leaving the delegates bound to a nominee elected by crossover Democrats, by saying it doesn't matter. We must beat Hillary and our bully is better than their bully. 

Another spoke about respecting the "will of the voters". I reminded her that we are a Republic. The party is even named the Republican Party for crying out loud. Our founding fathers gave us a republic not a group suicide by majority vote government.

If the party leadership insists on following after the biggest bully on the playground, hoping he won't hurt them when he's done with the other bully, then, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I won't be leaving the party, the party will be leaving me. Courage is a precious and rare commodity in today's political world. I suspect if someone showed up with some and exercised it, we'd have an effective leader by acclamation. I don't know about you guys, but I'm sick of fast-talking, big government, bullies who tell me I have to hold my nose and vote for someone because they say so.

Time for a Declaration of Independence from the two party system. Goodbye and, not only will I not let the door hit me in the ass on the way out, but I might just rip the door off the hinges so other honorable folks can find their way out of the cesspool that collects around Donald Trump.

Besides he doesn't need us. He who must not be elected said so himself.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King © 2016

We're Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

Support a Mass Walkout at the Republican Convention!

There are a lot of Republicans, mostly Christians, who find themselves unable to vote for the Republican frontrunner in November. Many of them will be at the Republican Convention in July. Many of them are made of stern stuff and are just as angry as any Trump supporter and more than a little desirous to see the GOP establishment brought down.

The GOP and Trump supporters have tried to laugh off the #NeverTrump movement, calling it inconsequential, feeble and failed. In an atmosphere where winning and being part of the victorious herd is more important than principle, these people believe that we'll knuckle under and go along again just one more time.

Pundits talk about what an historical thing it was for us to elect a black president and what it would be to elect a woman. Well, wouldn't it also be an historical thing for a party to lose a third of its members DURING the convention, because the party nominated an unacceptable candidate. It's not unprecidented. The Whig Party lost most of its members as it gradually lost its way philosophically.

For the past 40 years, the Republican Party has gradually lost its soul in its over-powering desire to win. Their history, however, has shown that, for the most part, the Republicans actually have a talent for losing. Starting with the disaster that was "They won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore," Richard Nixon, and the anemic Gerald Ford, the brightest spot over these four long decades was a man that the GOP leadership didn't actually want because he was too conservative and too much a Beltway outsider. George HW Bush was supposed to be next in line and after Reagan was gone, they dutifully put him up to have him knocked right back down when he did what all good Republican establishment folk do once elected - compromised his principles.

Then they gave us Bob Dole in 86, a man whose lackluster establishmentarianism failed to pick off an easy target in the smarmy Bill Clinton, even while Republican voters were busily restoring the Congress to Republican control. George W. Bush managed to engineer a win in 2000 and 2008, pushing aside the presumptive next-in-line, John McCain. Once again, the establishment put up its next in line with John McCain, throwing Sarah Palin in as a sop to the conservative wing who they were increasingly ignoring. After losing dismally to Barak Obama in 08, they ran Mitt Romney, another establishment candidate (his dad was former Republican presidential candidate George Romney). Mitt with a lot of help from the Republican establishment, managed to alienate the conservative wing of the party despite Mitt's being a decent guy and pretty talented businessman to boot. Conservatives sat on their hands in 2012 mostly because the GOP leadership told them they had to vote for Mitt because he was the lesser of two evils.

It's time to send a message to the GOP and it needs to be a very visible and embarrassing one. I think that, if Donald Trump is nominated by the Republican Party, all those who believe he is bad for the nation should stand up out of their seats, throw down their banners and placards and walk out of the building.

What a media moment that would be!  So what if the Republicans lose? They've already told us they don't need us. We can vote for conservative candidates for Congress. We can put in principled people in national offices; people who won't be afraid to impeach one of their own.

Besides, it would make one of those great "historical" moments.

© 2016 by Tom King

There Are Quislings Among Us

Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling certainly did not intend to add his name to the lexicon of several languages. He certainly didn’t intend to be stood up against a wall and shot. He was just a “conservative” trying to get ahead. He started out okay, organizing famine relief to Russia in the early 20s while working for the Norwegian government. He even attacked leftist office-seekers but failed to garner much support for himself and his party. Then opportunity smiled on Vidkun and the Germans invaded Norway. Quisling made an unsuccessful coup de’ tat attempt in 1940, but the Germans didn’t support him. Instead they made him a puppet head of a puppet government during the Nazi occupation, which satisfied his political ambitions, albeit for a brief time only ending in the afore-mentioned firing squad.

Quisling was notable chiefly for his opportunism, taking the easy path to power when he saw the opportunity. His lackluster career as a Nazi puppet seems to indicate that Vidkun’s heart wasn’t really in it, but like the old saying goes, “any port in a storm” and Quisling quickly tied up at Hitler’s docks. Other, more principled Norwegians opposed the Third Reich. Many lost their lives in what more practical Norwegians like Quisling saw as a losing cause.

Better to be with the winners, right? Today, we have an angry electorate that is tired of feeling like a nation of losers, failures and all around bad people whose president has gone to virtually every nation we’ve been attacked by and defended ourselves from and apologized to them for our actions – actions like feeding their poor, propping up their economies, defending them from enemies. That sort of thing. They're mad and looking for someone to blame.

And along comes a fast-talking “businessman” who claims to be one of them – a true red-blooded, free market capitalist, who knows just what we need to do to fix all their problems and end their shame. We need to throw out all the Mexicans and Muslims and build a wall and make them, not us, pay for it. We have somehow managed to choose a Quisling for ourselves; someone with just enough bluster and swagger to impress the masses and just enough “flexibility” to win over the bully boys on the progressive left. The anti-immigrant rhetoric creates a nice “enemy within” so that the weak-minded can line up behind their bully candidate and demonstrate their anger without risking anything personally. You see they have a bully who is going to “take care of it” for them.

Trump (or as I call him “He Who Must Not Be Elected”) wants to run out all the “Mexicans”. This smarmy New York liberal knows nothing about it. He hasn’t haven't seen the colonias in East Texas like I have. No running water, no sewers, no transportation, living in cardboard shacks. There are a couple of dozen of them and it is shameful that they exist. Nobody really knows they are there. They only see the men lined up on the corner of Beckham and Line Street, waiting to be underpaid for a hard day’s off-the-book manual labor. They haven’t seen the fat cat "businessmen" pontificating about the illegal immigration problem, while getting rich off the labor of those illegals.

It makes me sick to see these guys masquerading as good Republicans or good Democrats (whoever’s on top at the time - they don't care). All the while they keep these people poor and downtrodden and do everything to make sure that if you are an illegal, you have no way to get ahead; only to barely stay alive and keep working for the bosses.  Then, like our current pretender to the throne, they try to hide their sins behind the banner "Christian conservative" while doing precisely what progressives have been doing all along - protecting the wealthy. It’s the same noxious strategy of “managing” the lower classes and keeping them in line.  That's why I call them quislings. They certainly aren't Republicans in the traditional sense.

I got in a lot of trouble with that lot back when I was doing stakeholder initiatives back in East Texas trying to get some kind of fair shake for what was basically a slave labor force for rose growers and chicken processors. The so-called “Christian conservative" bosses were doing exactly what they were doing when they were Democrats before Republicans took over the Texas legislature. They were doing what their Confederate ancestors did. They use the government to protect their "peculiar institution". No matter that it’s little more than legalized enslavement of Mexican refugees.

Personally, I've always thought that if we wanted to cream the Democrats and put an actual free market conservative small government in place, we should become much more vocal advocates against the abuse and mistreatment of Hispanic immigrants. After all, we share their values - their work ethic, their sense of family, anti-abortion beliefs, religious beliefs and desire for opportunity in the free market. If, instead of embracing quisling imitation conservatives as our leaders, we started using the free market and our basic Constitution-guaranteed freedoms to do what is right, I think we could turn immigrants (legal or otherwise) into Republicans, the Democrats would make sure to slam the border shut faster than you can say, "Midnight emergency appropriations bill."

Besides, isn't freeing slaves from their Democrat/Big Government oppressors what the Republican Party was created to do?  And if you, just then, felt a surge of hatred toward illegal immigrants, then you’re probably not a Christian conservative. Jesus asked us to carry the gospel into all the world and specifically we are told to "Set the captives free." If we did that, made a concerted effort ot set free the illegal immigrant population and to make them one with us, you’d see a powerful force injected into the conservative movement – a force that would, with our help, turn and fight the drug cartels, the terrorists and invaders that threaten our country. Because then, to the horror of our Democrat friends, they would become Americans; flag-waving, God-fearing, free market capitalist Americans. They are already predisposed to be with us anyway, given the values they cross the borders with. They were looking to find the land of opportunity. Why not use that? After all, "All’s fair in love and war," they say. 

So why aren't we, for the love of God, using the twin powers of love and liberty to recruit soldiers to fight in our war against oppression and tyranny? Don't think it will work? Well I'm from Texas and I know for certain sure that there were "Mexicans" at both the Alamo and San Jacinto fighting shoulder to shoulder as Texians united. Why not again? Of course, we first must eject the quislings from amongst us. They're not helping us anyway.

Just one man’s opinion.

© 2016 by Tom King

Why the Lesser of Two Evil's Is a Trap for Voters

Picture: © 2016 by Ben Garrison

I watched a remarkable video this afternoon by Pastor Gary K. Gordon explaining why choosing the lesser of two evils will always fail and is morally wrong. Gordon made a good point. The idea of choosing the lesser of two evils, trains the two parties of a two-party system to ignore their greatest supporters and spend their energies on winning the wishy-washy folks in the middle. 

Parties depend on their members to vote for the Party candidate on the very principle that the party candidate is the "lesser of two evils". Because both parties count on their base to always vote for the Party candidate who is less evil than the other party's candidate, the party bosses can on the undecided middle voter in an attempt to tip the scales enough to win.  Because the Republicans are focused on people to the left of the party's base and the Democrats are focused on the people to the right of their base in order to win elections, the parties inevitably tend to drift philosophically toward the noncommital center. In this way, the Party leadership needs only shift slightly toward accommodating their base should the blacks or the Christians get antsy, while still pandering toward the middle. 

The upshot is that the Democrats neglect their black supporters and the Republicans neglect their Christian supporters because they can count on them to vote for what they perceive as "the lesser of two evils".  What we really need are three or four strong parties so voters have an actual choice. This would go a long way toward training our politicians to be representatives of their constituents rather than political ballplayers only concerned about winning.

At the same time, though, we'd have to have voters who weren't so afraid of losing an election, that they weren't willing to take a leap and actually do the right thing.  As it turns out, losing an election in the short run might not be the worst thing if it teaches our representatives to do the right thing in the long run rather than doing the safe thing or taking the expedient course.

Ronald Reagan proved that doing the right thing actually was a winning political strategy. It's a pity the Republican Party didn't learn from that. They've become so "smart" at how to win elections in the short run, that they've managed to lose their party in the long run.

Who's Ad Hominuming Who?

Jefferson Davis - Democrat

A recent Facebook post comment complained that an association the post was attempting to make between the KKK and the Democrat Party was unfair. The comment was, perhaps unintentionally, illuminating. The outraged individual (who claims to vote Republican) resorted to a defense in Latin, calling the whole thing an ad hominum attack. It sounds bad if you don't know what "ad hominum" means. The commentator mispelled it by the way calling it an "ad hominium" attack.  What our outraged friend said was, "Such ad hominium arguments leave anyone open to the charge of racism."

Seems like sauce for the gander to me. Just ask any conservative or Republican about ad hominum attacks and charges of racism. We got those thrown at us every day. Ad hominum refers to a claim or argument that is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. In this case the ad hominum argument says:

1. The KKK was started by Democrats
2. The KKK is racist
3. Therefore all Democrats are racists

(obviously a fallacious argument)

or

1. Democrats belonged to the KKK
2. The KKK hates black people
3. Therefore all Democrats hate black people

(also untrue since some Democrats ARE black).

or you could make this argument by introducing new information

1. The KKK was started by Democrats
2. The Jim Crow laws were written by Democrats
3. Segregation laws were enacted by Democrats
4. Historically, Democrats voted against virtually every law designed to provide women and minorities voting rights, the right to vote, civil rights and equal protection under the law.
5. The Democrat Party has never apologized for it's history of racism, lynchings, disenfranchisement, Black Codes, and racial segregation laws that imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life.
6. The Democrat party has NEVER apologized for its history of virulent racism and its role in starting the Civil War.
7. Therefore what would you conclude if this were the history of the Republican Party we were talking about?

James Earl Ray - Registered Democrat

And yet this is the history of the Democrat Party. Incredibly, though, the charge of racism is constantly being leveled at Republicans who have always voted almost 100% for every single piece of civil rights legislation ever put forward and who fought and died on the side of freeing the slaves in the Civil War. The Republican Party was even the political party of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King till his assassination by James Earl Ray, A Democrat. 

Does it make sense then that it's Republicans that get the racist label?

The Democrats were asked by one of their own to make a full apology for the party's long history of racism at its convention next time up. They rejected the idea. It's in the past, I suppose and who cares about that? 

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda director once said that if you tell a lie often enough, people will come to believe it.

Looks like he was right!

© 2014 by Tom King

ABC's Rick Klein Gives "Helpful" Advice to Republicans

Rick Klein - Boy King of all things
Political at ABC News

Ditch the Tea Party Candidates

Yahoo News' gleeful analysis of two East Coast state governor's races draws the conclusion that Republicans ought to reject the Tea Party conservative wing for candidates that are just slightly right of center - a formula for disaster virtually everywhere else in the country except the East Coast. Author Rick Klein cites Chris Christie's success in New Jersey and Tea Party supported conservative Ken Cuccinelli apparently losing campaign in Virginia as THE examples of what's wrong with the Republican Party.

Before the GOP starts taking advice from Klein, the brother of openly leftist Huffpo columnist Ezra Klein and would-be guru of all things political, as the new political director at ABC, they might want to consider the source of all this helpful advice and the premise behind it.

New Jersey as Klein's article points out is "Deep Blue" and Virginia, while ostensibly a Southern State, is virtually a parish of Washington DC so far as the number of Northern Virginians working in the capital goes. So many DC workers depend on Democrats for their continued and growing employment opportunities these days that the modern Army of Northern Virginia while still distinctly pro-Democrat, supports a very different party from the one that poor white Southerners fought for in the name of "States Rights". The Democrat party's pro-union and anti-states rights policies are the polar opposite of what Bobby Lee's descendents once claimed to have fought for, although very much pro-rich plantation owner if you judge by the number's of so-called 1 percenters that contribute heavily to Democrats.

Rick Klein's "strategy" to help the Republicans win elections might work in a heavily Yankee state like Jersey or the new Virginia, though I suspect that what the Yankees like most about Christie is his saucy, kick-ass rhetoric rather than his Republican-ness.  However, Klein's advice to kick the Tea Party conservatives to the curb would pretty much finish dividing the party and secure a Democrat majority ad nauseum anywhere west of the Alleghenies or East of the Sierras - which is likely just what Mr. Klein hopes for.

Klein, trained in the best leftist journalism schools, buys the mistaken premise that one captures the moderate "swing vote" best by running a moderate candidate, despite the fact that the moderate lost to the leftist in both of the last two elections. The only big wins for Republicans in the past 40 years have been when they've run a hard nosed conservative for president and similarly conservative candidates in most of the heartland.

What Klein neglects to mention in his "advice" is, that if the Republicans run a bunch of Chris Christies next go round, the Tea party will exit stage right and take their votes with them to a third party, or worse, to nowhere at all. Given the leftist tone over at the Libertarian Party, it's not likely they'll go there, so a fourth party (if you count the Libertarians as a party) becomes an even more likely possibility, leaving the plurality of votes solidly in the hands of the Democrats and likely to remain there.


How much more entertaining would it be for an ABC political director to have three or four political parties upon which to opine?


© 2013 by Tom King

Who's Pulling the Trigger on Obamacare?

Obamacare rolls out!

One of my liberal friends says he feels sorry for his Republican friends because the party "...has been hijacked by the Tea Party and made to look ridiculous."  He says that the Republicans are holding a gun to the Democrats' heads and saying "Give me what I want or I'll pull the trigger." 

And, apparently, that's a bad thing to his progressive socialist way of thinking.

It looks to me like it's the Democrats holding the gun only they're saying, "Give me what I want. I've already pulled the trigger!"

The trouble is, that after the abysmal failure of the Obamacare rollout and the Gestapo tactics by government employees on orders from on high, the Democrats have alienated a lot of people:  

• People whose flights were needlessly canceled.
• KIA soldiers' families who had to get their death benefits from a foundation rather than the US military.
• People locked out of parks and fenced off from monuments that sit by public sidewalks.
• Private business people forced to shutter their businesses because the government says their lease is null and void government workers don't get a paycheck.
• Old people tossed out of their retirement homes because the rangers say it's unsafe to drive on a park road while the government is shut down even though it's being patrolled by more park rangers and cops than usual because they're afraid the old people mike sneak back to their homes.
• Everybody who actually tried to sign up for Obamacare and got the blue error screen of death!

 I think the Dems must have used one of those "Wiley Coyote" cartoon guns with the "U" shaped barrel that always blasts you in the face when you shoot it.

Just sayin'

Tom King 
© 2013

*The title of this article in no way advocates the shooting of any political figure whatsoever. It is an ancient metaphor drawn from the misty origins of television and film. If you are from the NSA, FBI or CIA, please note that I am basically harmless and don't own any weapons more dangerous than an Eversharp kitchen night.

Where are the Gideons when we need them.....

(c) 2013 by Tom King

 The Republicans have forgotten how to speak clearly and how to tell stories that clarify issues.  Check out this short piece by Ronald Reagan more than a half century ago.  And he was still a Democrat at the time!!!

"A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won't decide when they're in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine. " 

- Ronald Reagan

I have to wonder whether, in these troubled times, perhaps we have been denied a Gideon, a champion to stand in the breach and to defend our liberties and our the nation, because we've wasted so many of the ones we've already been sent. A little prayer from all of us about now would not go amiss I'm thinking.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

Nuts!

By Tom King © 2012, Puyallup, WA

With the Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the presidential race this morning, the country club Republicans are all gathered in oak paneled rooms with glasses of Scotch and big ceegars congratulating themselves on having “unified the party” (by which they mean getting conservatives to surrender and rally round the Republican who’s turn it is to run for president). Santorum, by showing well and withdrawing gracefully will likely get a shot next time if Romney fails.



RNC Grand Poobah, Reince Priebus

 Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus said this. "Today, Senator Santorum has made a commendable decision. He has decided to put his country, party, and desire to defeat President Obama ahead of any personal ambition. I applaud his decision and congratulate him on the campaign he has run." (i.e. “Wait your turn like a good boy”).

Now Romney can safely do some things that appeal to moderates since the CC Repubs are quite convinced that moderates win elections despite all evidence to the contrary and multiple thrashings in presidential elections to show for it..



Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe

 I am reminded of General Anthony McAuliffe, who when he was told by a german general that defeat was inevitable and that he had no other choice than that he should surrender, sat down at his desk in his command post in Bastogne and wrote a one-word reply!

“NUTS!”

I’d like to propose that every conservative who is not happy with our choice of candidate, express their opinion by placing a single nut into an envelope and mailing it to Mr. Priebus.

Why just one nut? Have you ever tried to eat just one nut? It’s frustrating. You always want more.

Well, Mr. Priebus, guess how conservatives feel.

Same way!

Mail your single nut to:

Reince Priebus
Republican National Committee
310 First Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003

Ask for a receipt for your "generous contribution".

Tom King

Why Santorum, Newt and Ron Paul Should Stay In.

I'm tired of not voting in the Republican Primary. For the last few decades, by the time the primaries came to Texas, the vote was moot. Everybody had already dropped out except the heir apparent. I didn't vote in the primary last time. If I had, I'd have cast a useless vote for Fred Thompson who'd already dropped out. As it is I don't feel guilty not voting. It would have been a total waste of time. The candidate was already chosen before I got my say in it.

I think all the states should do their primaries on the same day - kind of a mini-presidential election. I think it's monumentally stupid to set the tone for the selection of the presidential candidate based on Iowa, New Hampshire and a couple of other smallish states and retirement centers. So what if the candidates wouldn't be able to campaign in each state. I don't like their commercials anyway and I don't care if they actually come to my state to campaign. I can watch them on television.  This tailing out of primaries is only good for one thing - allowing the party bosses to control the primary so no one unfortunate gets nominated and so that there isn't a real battle royale at the convention.

I want a real battle royale at the convention. I'd love to have seen what the delegate split would have been going into a convention if people had been allowed to vote for whoever they wanted to from the entire field at once.  I'm sick of only having one choice. I'm in Washington state now and it's not any better here.

Up here in Washington it used to be sometime in February, but they did away with the presidential primary altogether this year, ostensibly to save money. They called the primary a beauty pageant. It's now a smoke-filled room caucus kind of deal. Nobody mentioned we were having one and unless you go to a lot of Republican party gigs,  you didn't know it was even going on.

I hope Santorum stays in it to the bitter end alongside Newt and Ron Paul.  Then I think the three of them ought to get together and threaten to wreck the country club Republican leadership's carefully orchestrated Mitt Romney coronation at the convention. I think they should speak very openly about this strategy and let the votes fall where they may in the rest of the primaries. It's the only way conservatives will have any sort of significant voice at the convention.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Romney's Real Problem

What? Me worry?

Romney may well win the Republican nomination for president. If he does, I predict he'll have an uphill go of it. If he wins, it won't be by much and it's not because enough people don't dislike President Obama.

It will be because most of us will be too busy holding our nose while voting for another "moderate" just because the country club Republicans have decided he can get the moderate vote. They've bought whole hog into the idea that the moderates will only vote for moderates.  Au' contraire.

Moderates sit on the fence and tumble right or left depending on who does a better job of telling them what they think. A conservative can do that just as easily as a liberal and probably more easily since more than 65% of people call themselves conservatives. Ronald Reagan did it in 1980 and again in 84 and swept the country. Bush sr. managed one term on Reagan's coattails, then lost. Dole lost, then Bush jr. pulled off a squeaker. McCain lost.

Now it's Romney's turn according to the big boys in the Republican party. The problem is, taking turns in presidential politics is a sure way to lose.

What's going to make it tough for Mittens is this. Most conservatives dislike the Obama administration so much they'd vote for the Budweiser Clydesdales over President Obama if that's the only choice they have/ But as for getting out and getting excited over this candidate?  Ain't gonna happen, just like it didn't happen for John McCain.  At least McCain had the good sense to select Sarah Palin for a running mate. I doubt Romney will choose so well. He's heavily on a conservative gimme' so he's not really courting us anymore.counting

As a result, most conservatives will simply sit on their hands if Romney is the candidate. Oh, they'll cast their good soldier votes for Romney, but they won't swell the hallelujah chorus and that chorus is what sells the moderates. Obama has a regular choir behind him, creating the illusion of massive support. Against that cacophony, Romney brings lackluster conservative support to his battle for the confused middle of the roaders. It's kind of like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir vs. the Wharvey Gals, only the choir won't be singing behind their homeboy.

I fear this is NOT going to turn out well!

Just sayin'

Tom

It's Ron Paul's Fault I Put a Bullet Through My Flat Screen

Watched the Republican forum tonight. I was impressed with Perry and Gingrich. Both answered well. Romney avoided saying much of anything showing off his skill as a "politician".  Santorum and Bachmann sounded pretty good too.

But if I have to listen to Ron Paul tell Americans one more time that we need to understand what we've done to make the terrorists mad enough to attack us on 9/11.........I'm going to assault my television set.   Then I'm going to send Congressman Paul a bill for replacing my TV set along with a list of reasons why it's his fault that I put a ballpeen hammer through the screen.

How I Came to Vote Republican

The first presidential candidate I voted for was George McGovern. I didn't vote for him because I particularly like him. I voted for him because I distrusted Richard Nixon and didn't think he should win by a landslide. He did anyway and proved he was a sneaky bugger in short order.

I next voted for James Earl Carter in 1976 because he was a Washington outsider and I didn't like the way Ford was given the nomination for the Republicans.  I figured Carter for an honest man and a Christian.  I was 22 years old.

Something I overheard standing in line for that first vote troubled me. A young woman in front of me in the line said, "I just marked the straight ticket box. It was easier than looking at all those names I don't know and I voted for McGovern anyway."  The idea that people would vote straight ticket without knowing what any of the candidates believed seemed wrong to me and not very bright. With my Carter vote I came to realize that it takes more than being an outsider to administer the country. It takes genuine, workable ideas.

Over the succeeding (or, more accurately) failing) four years, as the gas lines lengthened and the price controls kicked inflation into double digits and we were humiliated and held hostage in Iran, I began listening to the radio messages of a California B-Western actor named Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was the first man I ever voted for in a presidential election and the first one I was ever completely happy with.  And, sadly, the last.

Ronald Reagan taught me that there were still some folk in politics who actually believe all the high-sounding phrases they use in speeches. More importantly, I learned that if you believe in Americans and get out of their way, they can do incredible things. Conservatism made sense to me. I'd seen creeping socialism rob America of it's spirit. I saw conservative leadership turn that around.

The Democrats had their chance to remold American society and all they gave us was malaise -- the same thing Communism gave the Russians and Chinese in the early days of the movement. Much longer and we'd have got some of the horror of the middle days of Russo-Chinese communism, the heyday of Stalin and Mao. Reagan shined a light on the great flaws of big government socialism and disrupted the Democrat-led march to the left.

My Grandpa became a Democrat during the depression and World War II under FDR. In his later years, he talked more and more like Reagan while he continued to vote a straight Democratic ticket. I never talked him away from his loyalty to the Democrat party, but I think he really liked Ronald Reagan and secretly admired him.

Me too, Grandpa.

Tom King, Puyallup, WA
(c) 2011 by Tom King

Ask George the Third about "Tea Party Morons"

(c) 2010 by Tom King

A Republican friend of mine called me a moron today.  Well, not me individually, but me as part of the Tea Party Movement.  He was saying we blew it because we supported Sharron Angle in the Nevada senate race against Harry Reid and now that's we've got all this junk going on in Congress.

I have a message for Republicans.  You go right ahead with the anti-Tea Party, "Tea-baggers are morons" rhetoric. THAT is exactly why the Republicans keep missing big opportunities to fix things. The Republican leadership continues to play politics, hoping to husband a little more power and a little more power, instead of risking doing the right thing whatever it may cost them.

NEWS FLASH TO THE GOP:  The Tea Party is not about political maneuvering. The Tea Party is about standing up to those who want to gut the Constitution and steal our liberties from us.  Have Republicans lost because of Tea Party action.  YOU BET!  So what?  Mistakes are part of the process of any revolution. George Washington looked for all the world like he was losing the war, right up until he won it! Movements driven by the people tend to be messy and without much in the way of "style".

But such movements are inexorable if they are right!

The essential message of the Tea Party movement is the same as that behind the original Boston Tea Party.

It is an expression of righteous anger and frustration. The Tea Party is NOT about making sure the Republican party controls the Congress. Au' contrere! I'd settle for control by conservative Democrats and so would most of the folks in the Tea Party movement.

Movements are often about sending a message to your own party (or at least the one perceived as most sympathetic to your cause).  The message we're sending is that we have had quite enough thank you and that if Republicans want us to help them achieve political power, they damned well better address the issues we care about. If they don't, we'll do it without them.  Whether we succeed or not at first, we are true believers, just like the socialists, Islamist, Zionists or whatever "ist" you want to name. We will not bend in the name of expedience. Boy do I hope I am right about that too.

I once had a T-Ball team made up of kids from a treatment center for emotionally disturbed children. We played as a team and everyone was skeptical as to whether the kids would be able to function out in the public, especially something as highly charged as a ball game.  Before we started, I told the kids what standard of behavior I expected and what the consequences of poor behavior would be.  The kids turned out to be the best behaved team in the league.

Then one day, a local bully picked a fight and three of my boys unloaded a string of profanity at him. He doesn't know how lucky he was that they stopped with profanity and didn't rearrange his face with baseball bats.  As a result of the incident, I suspended three of our best players for cursing in public. At our next game, we were losing badly as my three disgraced players watched in misery.  One of my direct care people, apparently elected for the job by his fellow staffers, approached me.

"Why don't we put the suspended kids back in the game?" he asked. "It's bad for the kids to be losing like this."

To my surprise, one of the suspended boys who was sitting within earshot spoke up.

"He can't let us play," the boy explained patiently to his counselor. "It wouldn't be fair."

That boy taught us a powerful lesson about right and wrong. He had accepted the conditions under which he was allowed to play ball. He knew cursing would get him a suspension. He lost his temper and violated that condition of play and therefore, under the rules, had to miss a game. That was perfectly right and clear to him.

Remember, this kid came from a horrific home and neighborhood where there was no order and no sense of right and wrong - only what was expedient for survival. Domination by whoever was the most powerful bully in the immediate area was his reality. Rule by mutually agreed upon law was to this boy a relief and a revelation. His counselor's suggestion that winning a baseball game was worth subverting the rule system he had come to depend upon for stability in his world was just too awful for him to contemplate.

We went on to lose that game, but we won the war- with this boy at least.

We may lose some battles, some seats in Congress and even some liberties along the way, but I pray to God the Tea Party movement continues to stand rock solid for the principals outlined in our constitution and that we remain unwilling to compromise those principals in order to gain a little political power for a party that has for too long looked down its nose at the very people who are the party's base.

In the end, it will be those who stand on principle and not on what's best for the party's political position who will prevail. We will not march lockstep with the country club Republicans who seem to think they are our betters, if not our masters. We will not take orders from plastic-haired politicians who consider themselves the elite of our nation and qualified by their money and position to manipulate the rest of us for our own good.

Instead, we will keep on pitching tea over the side, even if it does turn the harbor green; even if we have to do without iced tea for a while. And we will keep pitching until the gold-plated jackasses in Washington, in our state houses and in the mayor's offices hear us. We don't have time to play politics. We have businesses to run, families to care for and T-ball games to coach.

And if Republican know-it-alls want to call us morons, so be it. You guys just try and win your power back without us. In my book you're no more on our side than are the Democrats. At least they make it clear that they have no respect for us and that they want to turn our country into a big old socialist gulag. If it's a choice between "Gulag" and "Gulag Light", I choose "none of the above".

Tom

Who Should We Watch on Election Day? - Vote Here

Everybody's nervous about voter fraud in the upcoming election.  Who do you think is more likely to be the culprit if voter fraud happens?  I thought I'd put up a survey poll and find out what you think.

Just schooch over to the poll box to the right at the top and vote for who you think we most need to look out for.  You can vote for more than one if you think there is a second party to watch out for.  I realize some of those listed aren't political parties, but hey, they call themselves parties.

If you think of any parties we should add, let me know and I'll update the poll if I can.

Tom