Archives for March 2013

Republican National Committee Co-Chair Sharon Day says many changes need to happen for Republicans to start winning more elections, including a GOP embrace of comprehensive immigration reform and putting an end to “aggressively negative” rhetoric on the issue of marriage.

Earlier in March, the RNC issued a very detailed report into why the 2012 elections went poorly for the party and how efforts can be improved in future campaigns.  Suggestions ranged from fewer debates in the GOP primaries and greatly beefing up hi-tech outreach to making greater inroads with various demographics, especially blacks, Hispanics and young voters.

The RNC’s “Growth and Opportunity Project” reports young voters saw gay marriage as a defining issue in how they cast their ballots.  Day says the party stands behind it’s platform position of a marriage being between a man and a woman but the tone of the conversation needs to improve.

“What this report showed and what we find important is that tone does matter.  Words do matter.  You have to make people feel inviting.  You have to make people want to feel invited to be part of the process and part of the solution,” said Day.  “When we talk about these issues, we don’t have to talk about it in a negative aspect with individuals, which is a complete turn-off for many people, myself included.”

As high-profile Supreme Court arguments on same-sex marriage played out in Washington this week, Democrats were very active in urging the court to change the definition of marriage.  Republicans were largely absent from the debate.  Day says the GOP clearly stands behind its traditional marriage plank in the party platform.

“I think we clearly define that a marriage is between a man and a woman.  Our belief is from that point, but it doesn’t mean there also isn’t open dialogue to discuss it and to talk about it,” said Day.  “Again, our platform, that’s the way we define a marriage is between a man and a woman, but it doesn’t mean that we have to be aggressively negative about that.”

“Democrats are going to do what the Democrats are going to do.  They’re great at demagoguing.  They’re great at getting out there.  They’re great at dividing a nation rather than building unity and that’s the way they do politics,” she said.

The other issue the RNC report specifically addresses is immigration, with the GOP leaders urging passage of comprehensive immigration reform.  Day says the issue is a major reason for the plunge in Republican support among Hispanics over the last couple of election cycles and trumps the tendency of Hispanics to agree with the party on other issues.

“With a lot of Hispanics and a lot of minority groups, immigration is not the key issue, but it becomes a key issue when it becomes a political football that’s kicked from one side to the next without talking about it in honest terms,” said Day.

“There’s a big mixture about what should be immigration reform and I think we’ve led the way.  We have some of our individuals, like Ted Cruz, like Marco Rubio, that are leading the way in trying to come up with a solution.  That was a very important part of George W. Bush when he was president.  He couldn’t get it past the Democrats in any way, shape or form,” said Day.

Day believes the key for Republicans is not to shift their positions on key issues but to engage with voters more effectively.

“It’s not changing our principles but changing the message and the way we talk to people.  Half the battle sometimes is just reaching out to someone in their community, talking about the things we stand for and the convictions we stand for, the principles our party stands on,” said Day.

“If you’re a man, a woman, you’re Hispanic, you’re black Republican, you’re an Asian, doesn’t matter.  What we want is the same thing.  We want a good education for our children.  We want a job, to be able to put food on the table without two or three jobs.  We want strong national security.  Those are the things that are important to every American.  We did not do a good job as the Republican National Committee or our party or our candidates in talking about the issues that resonate to all Americans.  We weren’t in the communities.  We weren’t talking about it.  We didn’t make them feel invited.  We did not make them feel like we wanted them in our party and that’s our responsibility,” said Day.

One major victory for the RNC over the past two years was emerging from serious debt piled up under the leadership of former Chairman Michael Steele.  Day says it took a lot of work to convince donors to help the party get out of debt before it could even focus on messaging.

On the technical side, the GOP freely admits it was badly beaten by the Obama campaign in using new technology to inform, motivate and turn out voters.  As a result, she says the RNC is setting up an office in Silicon Valley to produce the most effective data machine possible and compete much better with Democrats in campaigns to come.

The party is also looking to scale back the number of Republican primary debates.  There were 21 debates among Republicans presidential candidates in 2008 and 20 in 2012.  The RNC is looking to cut that in half.

“It would be great to have not so many.  I think I attended 19 of the 20.  It was way too many.  It was like watching your family fight at the dinner table.  We saw that didn’t work, the process of more debates being better, it just in the end did not prove to be correct,” said Day, who says rule changes are in the works to limit the number of debates and could cost candidates who break the rules.

“We do have some mechanisms that we can put in place that the RNC, we think, under the rules of the body, to cut down on the number of debates tied to delegates.  I shouldn’t even say all the rules or what they’re looking at, but there are a couple of opportunities that we think that we can go,” said Day.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Betsy Woodruff of National Review cheer a new report showing Americans are leaving states with high taxes and big government and moving to states with more freedom.  They’re also disappointed that Ashley Judd will not run for U.S. Senate in Kentucky because of fun campaign and easy GOP victory that surely would have happened.  And they note the painful sequestration cuts that are still in place while more than $876,000 of your tax dollars are being used to study sex among New Zealand mud snails.

The Supreme Court wrapped up two days of arguments on the definition of marriage on Wednesday, with a leading advocate of traditional marriage expecting rulings that will be narrow in scope but may well favor same-sex marriage.

The justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday about the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative passed by voters that enshrined traditional marriage in the state constitution.  On Wednesday, the court considered the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law passed in 1996 that defines traditional marriage as the law of the land but allows states to reach their own definitions and protects states from being forced to recognize marriages legal in states that have different definitions of the institution.

Mathew Staver is chairman of Liberty Counsel and has argued in defense of traditional marriage in state courts around the nation.  He offered his analysis of this week’s proceedings, explained why he was gravely disappointed in the performance of the attorney defending Proposition 8 and painted a picture of what America would look like with legalized gay marriage based on what we’re already seeing in the states where the institution exists.

Staver says trying to guess what the Supreme Court will rule based on oral arguments is a risky proposition, as evidenced by many people assuming last year’s health care ruling would strike down the individual mandate and perhaps the entire Obama health only to be proven wrong in the final verdict.

Nonetheless, Staver says the justices seem very reluctant to make any sort of sweeping declaration about the definition of marriage.  However, he fears the shaky legal standing of those defending traditional marriage in California and at the federal level might lead to limited wins for those supporting gay marriage.

In the California case, the state attorney general declined to defend the law approved by voters so private groups are filling that role instead.  President Obama’s Justice Department announced it was no longer fighting to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act.  House Republicans picked up the slack in that case.

“So the question is, ‘Are these cases even supposed to be before the High Court?’  That’s a question the court is asking and seems to be very troubled by.  They might ultimately punt on this issue and might not even reach the merits of the case,” said Staver.

If standing is rejected for the defense on both cases, the lower court rulings stand.  Staver says the impact of that could be rather limited, with gay marriage becoming legal only in the northern district of California and the Defense of Marriage Act being struck down only in the southern district of New York.  However he says the wording of the court’s ruling will make a huge difference, particularly on DOMA.

“If they essentially set up a sitting duck, where all you have to do it file suit in a broader area where you don’t have standing and use the Supreme Court’s language against it, then you could basically pick off the federal Defense of Marriage Act in a different way,” said Staver, who sees Justice Anthony Kennedy lining up against DOMA.

“Justice Kennedy has made a suggestion that DOMA violates states’ rights.  I think that’s obviously wrong.  It doesn’t violate any state’s rights at all.  States don’t have the right to define what kind of federal benefits its citizens are going to have.  They can define what kind of state benefits they’re going to have and DOMA doesn’t interfere with that,” said Staver.  “I think DOMA’s constitutional.  There’s legitimate reasons and rational reasons for having this definition of marriage in our federal Defense of Marriage Act.”

Staver says it’s not out of the question for the justices to issue a broader ruling in favor of gay marriage, a move that he says would compromise the integrity of the court.

“I think that if the court goes too far either in the Proposition 8 case or the DOMA case, in my view it will undermine the legitimacy of the court, making it an illegitimate arbiter of the rule of law and transforming it or morphing it into simply a political machine,” said Staver, who says the Supreme Court has issued political decisions in the past on rulings such as Roe v. Wade and last year’s Obamacare finding.

The merits of the traditional marriage argument are strong in both cases according to Staver, but he was not at all impressed by the oral presentation in defense of Proposition 8 by attorney Charles Cooper.

“Cooper did a terrible job, both in terms of his oratory delivery and was horrible on the substance,” said Staver.  “He was asked a question, ‘What is the reason why marriage is different or unique?  Why would states want to protect marriage?’  He didn’t come up with an answer.  (Justice Antonin) Scalia then threw out the answer about how children do better when they’re raised with a mom and a dad,” said Staver.  “They didn’t know why that has not been presented in the brief.  (Justice Elena) Kagan and Scalia had mentioned that to Cooper and Cooper had a home run that he could have knocked out of the park.”

Staver says Cooper failed to make a stronger argument because of an attempt to argue the case on limited grounds.

“Unfortunately, they have positioned this case from the very beginning, which is the reason Liberty Counsel wanted to intervene in this case, as a very marriage-lite kind of situation.  They haven’t really wanted to address the issue of homosexuality and they haven’t really wanted to address the difference that children have when they’re raised in a home with a mom and a dad as opposed to two men or two women.  That’s a significant difference and it’s a significant reason, not just for procreation which obviously is essential, but also for creating the best environment for the well-being of children,” said Staver.

While the discussions of this week’s cases center on the legal arguments and possible rulings, Staver says there are very real, very negative consequences to gay marriage being legalized in these decisions or at any time in the future.  He says evidence from the states where gay marriage is legal paints a sobering picture for anyone who doesn’t agree with the gay agenda.

“If the Supreme Court went the wrong way it would be catastrophic because it would literally reshape America.  It would undermine marriage and the institution of marriage.  We’ve seen that in the Netherlands that adopted a same-sex civil union type of arrangement in 2000.  We’ve seen information that’s coming out of Norway, Denmark and Sweden where marriages are simply falling apart.  Children are being born out of wedlock.  Males are not committed to the marriage relationship.  When you have children being born out of wedlock at a greater rate, what you ultimately have is a dumbing down of the economy, a weakening of the economy.  You have a damaging of the children and the family structure.  What you have is a significant breakdown of the very core of society,” said Staver.

“Moreover, it would put this homosexual agenda on a direct collision course with the exercise of religion. We saw what happened in Massachusetts, and it’s just one of many, many examples of where same-sex marriage and same-sex unions come into play.  Catholic charities have had to get out of the adoption ministry because they’re not going to violate their religious beliefs and place children in homes with same-sex couples.  You see that with people who run bed and breakfasts, wedding photographers, cake decorators and it goes on and on and on, where you’re going to have to choose between your profession or same-sex agendas,” he said.

“Then you look at the public schools.  Parental rights will be undermined.  Children as young as kindergarten will be forced to have information fed to them about, not just tolerance and alternative families which is bad enough with regards to re-definition of the family, but that same-sex, aberrant sexual behavior is normative, good and healthy.  That’s the kind of thing that you’re going to see in the public schools and we’re seeing it already in some of these states like Massachusetts that have adopted same-sex marriage,” said Staver.

“This would be on a nationwide basis.  It would be catastrophic.  I think it would ultimately be the beginning of the end of the United States of America as we know it,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Katrina Trinko of National Review discuss the GOP silence on this week’s marriage debate how the party is wrestling with the issue.  They also preview another possible Rand Paul filibuster – this time over gun control legislation.  And Katrina breaks down an ugly, looming fight between Labor Secretary nominee Thomas Perez and Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn.

Spending restraint and trust in leadership are the hallmarks of the Curtis Bostic’s campaign to defeat former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and win a seat in the House of Representatives.

Sanford is the former two-term governor of South Carolina, whose bright political career seemed to derail when he vanished from the state for several days and then returned and admitted to being in Argentina with his mistress.

However, Sanford re-entered the political fray after a chain reaction of political events.  Sen. Jim DeMint resigned his U.S. Senate seat at the start of 2013 and South Gov. Nikki Haley appointed Rep. Tim Scott to fill the remainder of DeMint’s term.  That leaves a vacancy in South Carolina’s First Congressional District.  A 16-candidate Republican field was whittled down to Sanford and Bostic.  Sanford easily won the most votes but failed to win a majority, so he and Bostic will face a run-off April 2.

Bostic served eight years on the Charleston City Council and considers himself the grassroots candidate in this race against a man he considers to be a career politician.  He says getting the nation’s fiscal house back in order would be his number one priority in Washington.

“We believe that this financial calamity that’s going on in our nation has to be addressed head-on.  We do not believe it to be a revenue problem.  We think it’s a spending problem and conservative, common sense Americans have got to take again the reins of this great nation of ours and stop this flood of cash that is coming out of Washington,” said Bostic.

A retired U.S. Marine, Bostic has started small businesses and charities, including orphanages in Burma.  He says that real world experience separates him from Sanford, who is also running a campaign vowing fiscal responsibility.

“I’m the grassroots guy.  I’m the guy that you run into at Costco, the guy that stands and pumps my gas next to you here in the First District.  That gives us a different vantage on spending, I believe, than someone who is a career politician,” said Bostic.   “I also think it is of note that while Gov. Sanford did a great job in some of his spending decisions, I don’t see a lot of folks coalescing around ideas during his time.  I believe that I stand a better chance of being able to unite people.”

As for how he would approach current fiscal debates in Washington, Bostic says he has mixed feelings about the House GOP budget blueprint that was approved last week.

“Frankly, I probably like the Rand (Paul) plan a little bit better and that has now failed in the Senate.  Good elements in it reduced the deficit much sooner.  I candidly favored it, but if the Ryan plan were the best we could get, I would applaud it and stand with it,” said Bostic, who says Ryan’s approach to Medicare reform is especially appealing to him.

Several news reports and some blogs sympathetic to Bostic refer to him as the Tea Party candidate in the race.  He doesn’t personally describe himself that way, but is happy to have support from those activists.

“I think that there are those in the Tea Party that like elements of our campaign.  I think there are those in lots of conservative groups that would buy into portions of our candidacy.  I welcome Americans of all stripes who share the idea that we need to return to conservative government,” said Bostic.

As for the impact of the Sanford scandal on the race, Bostic doesn’t mention it much, but his advertising does prominently feature his wife of 25 years, Jenny, and their five children.  Bostic says that story matters more to some voters than others but he’s focused on fiscal issues because people already know what they think of Sanford’s behavior.

“I don’t know that for me personally, at this juncture, that it’s a critical issue.  I have my own personal ideas as to what I want to expect from leaders, but what I think we are united around is the idea that we’ve got to send someone who is fiscally responsible and who we can trust to Washington,” said Bostic.   “I think we’re also united around the idea the old ways of doing things just don’t seem to be working well for the Republican Party.  We could use some new faces and fresh blood.”

Bostic says he is also a strong supporter of our military and a strong national security policy.  He also describes himself as  1cstaunchly 1d conservative on social issues.  He believes some in the GOP are making a big mistake by marginalizing social conservatives.

“What I don’t want to see us do as a party is abandon some of the social conservatives that have helped unite this party.  We need to be a party of inclusion,” he said.

Sanford piled up 37 percent of the vote in the 16-candidate primary, compared to 13 percent for Bostic.  A new PPP poll shows Sanford ahead in the runoff 53-40 percent.  Still, Bostic hopes to pick up support from the losing candidates and warn Republicans that the seat may be won by a Democrat if Sanford is the nominee.

The same PPP poll shows Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch leading Sanford 47-45 percent.  Bostic and Busch are tied 43-43.

“I think the crux of this campaign are going to be those people that were with other candidates finding a place where they’re happy.  Are they going to align with Gov. Sanford or are they going to go with someone who is new and fresh that can certainly beat Colbert Busch and come to our camp?” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America flies solo in today’s Three Martini Lunch.  He explains why the retirement of South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson makes a GOP pick-up in that state very likely.  He also looks at polling showing big trouble for the re-election hopes of Florida Gov. Rick Scott.  And he highlights the Obama girls’ vacation to Atlantis in the Bahamas as the latest sequestration head-scratcher.

Georgia Rep. Paul Broun says getting America’s reckless spending under control is the dominant theme of his campaign and he believes that goal and his record in Congress will help him win the nomination and the general election despite very little enthusiasm for his bid in the national party.

Broun announced his candidacy just weeks after two-term GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss announced he would not seek a third term. Broun says one issue is driving his pursuit of a seat in the U.S. Senate.

“Grassroots activists all over Georgia want a leader who’ll go to the Senate to work to stop this out-of-control spending that both parties have been doing and that’s what my campaign is going to be all about,” said Broun. “That’s what I’ve been doing in Congress, trying to push the government back to constitutionally limited government as our Founding Fathers meant it. That’s what I am all about.”

Broun’s approach to federal spending has been known to give heartburn to his own party’s leadership. Just last week he was one of a handful of House Republicans to oppose the budget blueprint spearheaded House Budget Committee Chairman and 2012 Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan because it wasn’t aggressive enough in reining in spending.

“I voted against it because it doesn’t even cut spending. It just slows the growth from a five percent growth to a 3.4 percent growth. This is just intolerable as far as I’m concerned, so what I’ll be doing is proposing specific cuts,” said Broun.

First up on Broun’s chopping block would be to completely shut down the U.S. Department of Education, a move that would save taxpayers an estimated $70 billion per year. He says that money should go back to the states to help boost teacher pay and remove the “shackles” of No Child Left Behind.

He is also quick to point out that he has proposed more cuts than any other member of the Georgia congressional delegation, a comment that should come as no surprise since the national GOP is hoping at least one of the other Georgia House members enters the race – namely Rep. Tom Price, Rep. Phil Gingrey or Rep. Jack Kingston. All three have indicated they are studying the race but have yet to make any formal announcements.

“The people of Georgia want a leader in the Senate that has the record and the will to say no to this out-of-control, irresponsible irrational spending that both parties have been doing and that’s exactly who I am and what I’m all about,” said Broun. “There’s nobody who can get in this race that has the record or will to say no. In fact, they’ve all been part of the problem, so that’s the reason I’m going to win this race.

In the 2012 cycle, controversial comments on social issues – namely abortion – caused major headaches for two Republican Senate nominees. For Broun, the issue likely to come up is not abortion but evolution. At a speech in September 2012, he labeled concepts like evolution and the Big Bang Theory as “lies straight from the pit of Hell…lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” He also subscribes to a “young earth” philosophy, contending the earth is roughly 9,000 years old.

When asked how he would counter the inevitable scrutiny over those comments, Broun made it clear he intends to stay on message.

“I am a Bible-believing Christian. I also realize that people have other beliefs than I do and that’s fine. In fact, I respect their beliefs, but the thing we all can believe in is that we’ve just got to stop all of this out-of-control spending. No matter what your religious beliefs are, we’ve got to deal with this tremendous debt that’s unsustainable,” said Broun.

Broun would head to the Senate with own goals and priorities, but he says he’s excited about the possibility of serving alongside the likes of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and other young members Broun sees as vigorously defending the original intent of the Constitution.

“I’m greatly anticipating my joining those folks in the Senate. The more of us that get there the greater effect we’ll have on stopping out-of-control spending and getting this country headed in the right direction,” said Broun.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Kevin Williamson of National Review are heartened to see Americans strongly supportive of Rand Paul’s efforts to protect Americans from being targeted by drone strikes on U.S. soil.  They also groan as Sen. Ted Cruz reveals many in the Senate GOP are disheartened and have all but given up hope of winning the fight to preserve liberty.  And Kevin explains why despite Michael Bloomberg’s nanny-state psychosis, the next New York City mayor will probably be far worse.

President Obama went to great lengths to convince Americans and Israelis that we stand should-to-shoulder with Israel but the private talks were just another round of demands for Israeli concessions, according to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton.

“This is a trip that’s very rare in the sense that the public opportunities that the president has are about as divorced from the real substance of the private conversations as you can imagine,” said Bolton. “Publicly, there’s no doubt that the president wanted the photo opportunities and the appearance of smoothing over the difficulties that he’s had in his personal relationship with Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu and also trying to smooth over some of the difficulties in the bilateral relationship between the two countries. Given the mainstream media’s approach to the trip and the photo ops that he’s had, I think he’s done what he wanted to do in the short term from the optical or political point of view.

“But the substantive messages delivered privately are still very, very tough to Israel – don’t consider using force against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, be prepared to make more concessions to the Palestinians. For all of the ooing and aahing over what the president said publicly, he broke no new substantive ground publicly. So the gaps in the relationships and the problems with dealing with Iran and with the Palestinians remain, essentially, as I think they were before,” said Bolton.

According to Bolton, that means the president still favors returning to pre-1967 borders and agreeing with the Palestinians that settlement construction in the disputed territories must stop before any peace talks are renewed. He also says the fact Obama never publicly called for a new round of peace talks shows how futile that is in the current climate.

“I think where Obama is really tilting is toward both reality and his own reputation. You don’t want to call for a new round of peace talks that are destined to run into to the ground. But it was very interesting, I thought, that the president said at one stop that Secretary of State John Kerry would be investing a lot of his time in the effort. So I think Obama’s made it clear he’s not going to put political capital into peace processing, as they like to call it, unless he sees some greater prospect of progress. But he’s perfectly prepared to have his secretary of state waste his time on it and see what happens,” said Bolton.

Another telling development from the trip is Obama’s repeated assessment that Iran is at least a year away from a nuclear bomb. Bolton says the message behind that estimate is crystal clear.

“Don’t take any military action because it would be precipitous and don’t look for us to be helping you out with it,” said Bolton in parsing the Obama administration position. The former ambassador says Prime Minister Netanyahu estimates Iran to have a nuclear weapon by summer or even later this spring. He says it’s clear the Obama administration is trying to undermine the case for military action by dragging out the estimated timetable.

“The administration testified through its director of national intelligence just two weeks ago that they still think Iran hasn’t even made a decision to build nuclear weapons. Since nobody builds a nuclear weapon by accident, that year period is actually much longer. It doesn’t begin until there’s a clear decision actually to build the weapon,” said Bolton. “Personally, I think that’s a complete misreading of what’s going on in Iran. I think they made a decision 20 years ago that they wanted nuclear weapons and that they’re actually a lot closer than a year, but they’re not in a rush. They’re not in a hurry to build that first nuclear weapon because they’re not intimidated by the United States. Iran is building a very broad and deep nuclear weapons program that, as time goes on, will put them in a position to build many, many nuclear weapons – dozens and dozens in a relatively brief period of time. That’s capacity they want to have, not one or two nuclear weapons but a whole arsenal of them.”

Bolton also commented on reports from earlier in the week about the Syrian army using chemical weapons against the rebels. He says the facts as we know them raise doubts about whether the weapons were actually used.

“The reports, even if you take them at face value, were one isolated incident. One would think that if the regime, or the opposition for that matter, were going to cross that line of using chemical weapons, they would have had more than just one use,” said Bolton. “They’re terrible weapons but if you’re going to use them and pay the political price for using them, you might as well have some impact on your opponent and I don’t see that yet.”

The reports of chemical weapons being used have some American lawmakers urging military intervention in Syria. Bolton says we do have national security interests in this conflict but not the ones most people think we should have.

“I think the US interest here is very clear. We do not want those weapons exiting Syria, falling into the hand of terrorists like Al Qaeda that could use them against us and our friends and allies worldwide. That is the most important thing. I’m terribly sorry about the tragedy that Syria is undergoing, 70,000-plus civilians killed in the past two years, but the American national interest is in protecting against those chemical weapons being used against us or our friends by terrorist groups,” said Bolton.

It’s been three weeks since the sequestration cuts went into effect, and both parties continue to blame each other for not coming up with alternative plans and for imposing draconian program cuts.  In response, the Capitol Steps bring three key lawmakers together to find out what’s really happening.