Archives for April 2014

Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint says the conservative battle against the establishment mentality of both parties still rages, but he says engaging in the battle of idea instead of rhetorical bomb-throwing is the smart way to get America on the path to recovery as soon as possible.

The former South Carolina senator also offered passionate comments about recent comments from prominent GOP figures on issues ranging from health care to immigration to marriage.

DeMint and Heritage Action were among the most vocal conservatives calling for government funding to be contingent upon the defunding of Obamacare last year.  That pressure triggered several House votes calling for defunding or repealing or delaying certain aspects of the law.  When those efforts died in the Senate, many Democrats, media outlets and voters blamed the GOP for the partial government shutdown.

Buoyed by the ensuing public relations nightmare of the Obamacare rollout, Republicans quickly maneuvered to craft a a continuing resolution that rolled some of the spending restraints imposed by sequestration while promising deficit reduction.

Heritage Action and other conservative groups urged Republicans to vote against the bill, causing House Speaker John Boehner to denounce their tactics.

“They’re using our members and they’re using the American people for their own goals.  This is ridiculous.  Listen, if you’re for more deficit reduction, you’re for this agreement,” said Boehner in December.

DeMint stands by the Heritage opposition to the bill, which passed easily, saying recent history shows those projected cuts may never happen.

“The bill that supposedly reduced the deficit actually boosts spending up in the next two years with the promise of sometime in the future reducing spending again.  Of course that’s what the sequester did.  It supposedly was going to reduce spending, but they didn’t want to reduce spending now.  They keep promising it in the future,” said DeMint.

“If I hadn’t been seeing the same thing happen for 15 years while I was in the House and Senate, then I would say let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.  But there is no doubt in my mind.  They’re not going to stop spending unless the people of this country force them to.  This debt is going to hurt us, it’s going to hurt future generations.  Unfortunately, the people who are voting for the political figures who support this debt are the ones paying for it and that’s the young millennials, who are probably the most ripped off generation in history,” said DeMint, who says he’s not looking to pick any political fights but to promote policies rooted in freedom and limited government.

“We’re not Republican or Democrat at Heritage.  We’re just focusing on the right ideas and we’re trying to get the country to move toward ideas such as decentralization and more competition between the states.  If we can start the parade in that direction, I think the politics will follow.  So we’re not going to spend so much time criticizing or beating Republicans over the head.  I think if they see the country moving in the right direction, hopefully both parties might follow,” said DeMint.

Like any election year, Republicans of all stripes are hoping for unity heading into the fall campaign season.  One major pillar of that unity was assumed to be lockstep opposition to Obamacare and a renewed promise to repeal it.

However, in just the past week, House Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul both indicated that the recent open enrollment of many Americans on the federal and state exchanges means full repeal is probably not doable.  Both Rodgers and Paul reiterated their intense opposition to most of the law and vowed to work for massive reforms within its existing structure.

DeMint says that’s not good enough and believes the party can unite around a strategy that still includes repeal.

“We cannot have socialized medicine in this country.  It hurts too many people.  It’s already hurting people.  It’s going to hurt our whole health care system,” he said.  “You’re never going to throw people off a plan they’re on like this president is doing, but it would be relatively easy at this point to pass repeal, to give states flexibility, to allow the subsidies on the plans people are already on to phase out over a period of years or be replaced with something at the state level.  There a lot of things we can to do to repeal and replace this with something that actually improves our health care system rather than destroys it.”

McMorris is not only taking heat from the right over her Obamacare comments but for also predicting an immigration reform bill would reach the House floor by August.  It’s an issue that bitterly divides the right and DeMint cannot understand why this push is happening now.

“Why would a party that believes in limited government be looking at amnesty as a priority at a time when we need to fix our tax code.  We need to figure out how to reduce spending.  We need to fix Social Security and Medicare so they’re there for future generations,” said DeMint.

“Those are the big issues, yet the president is talking about how to manage what businesses pay their employees, fabricating wars on women and other things.  Yet, we’ve got Republicans who are caving to corporate pressure on things like the (Export-Import) Bank, a big corporate welfare boondoggle.  The whole amnesty bill is something doing corporate America’s bidding,” he said.

“That’s what frustrates us about politics and I don’t think America is interested in that any longer.  I think you’re going to see a sea change in this election.  We want to be a part of helping people understand what the right policies are right now where our country is.   It’s certainly not what they’re talking about in either set of leadership in Washington right now,” said DeMint.

Another major point of debate inside the Republican Party is over the proper stance on the definition of marriage.  The national party platform still defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and a majority of Americans who identify as Republicans agree.  But with national polls trending towards acceptance of same-sex marriage, millennials overwhelmingly supporting that position, at least one state party changing its platform and a string of court decisions overturning traditional marriage laws, many in the party believe it’s time to change course.

DeMint says it’s important for conservatives and all Americans to understand the unique role traditional marriage plays in a stable society, but adds that he doesn’t want Washington mandating anything on the issue.

“The best environment to raise children is when there’s a mom and dad in the home and all the statistics show that.  So this is not about people’s rights or marriage equality.  This is about the best environment to raise children.  The federal government has never regulated marriage before or defined it.  It’s something that’s come from civil society, our churches and states have regulated marriage in order to protect it.  And that’s where we need to leave it,” said DeMint.

“I would hope every state would recognize the importance of traditional marriage.  But if not, let the states decide and let states that want to protect the millennia-old definition of marriage (do that).  No one in Washington should be deciding that for everybody in the country,” said DeMint.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad new emails reveal more evidence that the White House spun the Benghazi terrorist attack as reaction to an internet video even though it knew the truth.  They also groan as the economy proved to be stagnant during the first quarter of 2014.  And they discuss a scheme that defrauded taxpayers of more than $1.3 million in ink cartridges.

With the national debt continuing to soar, bloated government getting further entrenched and the nuclear American family in decline, America’s brightest days might seem to be behind her.  But Heritage Foundation President and CEO Jim DeMint says our nation can rise stronger than ever simply by following the proven course that triggered greatness in the first place.

DeMint served in both the U.S. House and Senate before resigning in 2013 and taking the helm at Heritage.  In his new book, “Falling in Love with America Again,” DeMint says he decided to apply his efforts to the private sector because making real change happen within the government proved to be very difficult.

With a national debt well north of $17 trillion, federal government gathering more power and families seemingly facing more challenges than ever, DeMint says it’s a fair question as to whether America can right the ship.

“An intellectual analysis of where we are would say we probably passed the tipping point.  Technically, it’s going to be very difficult to turn around.  That’s my head analysis.  My heart analysis is that I know the spirit of freedom still runs deep within the hearts of millions and millions of Americans.  I also know that this country has been blessed by God, it’s in His hands and that spiritual revival is still very possible in our country,” said DeMint.

“We’ve got a better chance of turning our country around than our founders did, winning a war of independence against Britain.  The odds have been against us before.  We can turn it around but only if people understand what’s wrong,” he said.

“If they continue to think, ‘Well, the Democrats aren’t doing it right in Washington, now lets try the Republicans’ version of national education or national health care,’ it doesn’t matter who’s in charge.  The country is too big to manage and it was never intended to manage all the things it’s doing in Washington,” said DeMint.

In his book, DeMint highlights limited government approaches to issues ranging from health care to education to energy.  The common thread among his proposals is the value of approaching issues as “small platoons” rather than in top-down ways through a growing federal government.

“Whether you’re looking at businesses, organizations or the government itself, the real innovations and solutions tend to come from the ground up.  America was built that way.  We were built from the ground up.  We were a very decentralized country from the very beginning.  The whole point of the Constitution was to keep us that way, with a very limited federal government and a vibrant, competitive system between the states,” said DeMint.

DeMint contends that as America moves away from those principle, we lose a big part of our identity.  He says engaging in small platoons, as families, churches or other community groups is a proven path to success and is still the key to making America what we want it to be.

“As we become more like centrally-planned European countries, America is losing its uniqueness and we are losing a lot of the things that made us great and prosperous in the first place,” said DeMint.

“But most of the book is about little platoons still at work all over the country, creating better schools, developing our energy on private lands, even figuring out how to insure themselves without insurance companies for health care.  These examples of success are all around us.  The federal government continues to try to replace them, to punish them and to create incentives to do things the wrong way, in spite of all the evidence that what’s working in America is still coming from the ground up,” said DeMint.

Another critical component to a stable, growing and thriving society in DeMint’s eyes is strong families.  He says big government programs have been a disaster for the American family.

“Unfortunately, the government, in its attempt to help the poor, have actually created more poverty and broken up families.  By doing that, they create inter-generational poverty and many other social pathologies of drug use, high school dropouts and incarceration.  A lot of that comes straight from broken families,” said DeMint.

DeMint knows first-hand that single-parent homes are not always avoidable, but he says the federal government is actively undermining the traditional family structure.

“I grew up in a home with a single mom, but we don’t need to arrange our charitable welfare programs in a way that means a mother can get help if she doesn’t have a husband in the home.  So (government programs) discourage marriage and family formation.  We seem to be doing everything we can at the federal level to discredit the traditional family, which all the statistics show you if a child grows up in a home with a mom and dad, they have the best chance of succeeding and very little chance of ever living in poverty despite where they started,” said Demint.

The 2014 midterm elections could be pivotal towards steering America in the right direction, according to DeMint.  However, he says many states with conservative leaders are already proving that good policies at the state level are making life better for all citizens, especially the less fortunate.

“Look at what (Gov. Bobby) Jindal’s doing in Louisiana (on education).  Look at what they’ve done in Florida with more choices.  And look at the fact the children who benefit the most are often poor minority children, the ones they said that choice would hurt,” he said.

DeMint says when liberal policies run unchallenged we get crises like Detroit, but limited government approaches lead to well-run governments and economic success, such as in North Dakota’s energy production and the effort of Texas leaders to keep regulations few and taxes low.

“The answers are all around us and we don’t have to win all the battles in Washington.  We just have to move the battles out of Washington and let the states compete.  Once we do that, I think you’re going to see America return very quickly,” said DeMint.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see the mainstream media ever so slightly begin to drop their instinct to protect President Obama at all times.  They also groan as Secretary of State John Kerry warms Israel could be an apartheid state if it doesn’t come back to Middle East peace negotiations.  And they slam House GOP leaders for vowing not to repeal Obamacare and to predict immigration reform passage this year.

Middle East talks collapsed in recent days, after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas publicly reunited with the terrorist group Hamas and triggered Israel’s exit from further negotiations.

Critics of U.S. policy are also furious at Secretary of State John Kerry for suggesting that Israel’s failure to embrace a two-state solution with the Palestinians could leave the only Middle East democracy branded as “an apartheid state”.  The Daily Beast reports Kerry made the comments in a closed door meeting with “influential world leaders.”

The term immediately takes listeners to the decades-long policy of racial separation and inequality in South Africa.  The understood implication in Kerry’s comments is that Palestinians living in disputed territories controlled by Israel would suffer from prejudice, persecution and inequality if a two-state solution is not achieved.

Dr. Mike Evans is a Middle East expert and  a longtime personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  He says the U.S. and the Palestinians are demanding that Israel made concessions in the full knowledge that the Palestinians want to exterminate them.

“What this is about is terror strategy.  It works like this.  ‘Israel, you give us what we want or we kill you.  We’ll kill you.’  Therefore, (Abbas is) going back to full-blown terror.  They’ve done it many times before and they’re doing it again,” said Evans.

“So what does John Kerry do?  Instead of condemning them, he goes after Israel.  ‘Israel, what’s wrong with you?  Geez, just because they want to kill you and on the week of the Holocaust Memorial they want to blow you up,'” he said.

“John Kerry needs to apologize to the state of Israel.  Here’s a democracy that Arabs live in very happily, better than anywhere in the Muslim world, because they won’t embrace a terror state and people want to destroy them.  John Kerry now calls them an apartheid state.  He needs to go back to school.  He doesn’t even know the meaning of the word apartheid.  That’s nuts.  Israel has never been an apartheid state.  It’s not an apartheid state, and you sure don’t chastise the state of Israel because they don’t want to get into bed with terrorists,” said Evans, who says Kerry’s philosophy suggests evil should never be confronted.

“If you’re going to go with that logic, you might as well apologize to Osama bin Laden’s family.  What did you kill him for?  What are you some kind of apartheid state?  The guy just wanted something.  Couldn’t you negotiate with him?” mused Evans.

“John Kerry has lost his mind.  He has damaged American foreign policy worldwide with one swift stroke of his tongue.  It’s unbelievable that he would be so shameful to say what he said,” said Evans, who says the damage done by Kerry’s comments extend far beyond the Middle East.

“He sent a signal to all the bad actors.  He sent it to Putin in Russia.  He sent it to Iran.  He sent it to North Korea.  He sent it to Syria and Al Qaeda.  ‘We’re afraid.  We’re weak.  Come after us.  It’s insane,  It’s completely outrageous,'” said Evans.

According to Evans, the Obama administration is aggravated that Netanyahu sees the Middle East impasse in black and white terms and not in the nuanced shades of gray that Obama, Kerry and other liberal academics prefer.  He also wonders how Israel can be expected to trust anyone affiliated with Hamas, which denies the Nazi Holocaust but openly calls for a Jewish holocaust in Israel.  Evans also rejects Abbas as any sort of moderate, saying the Palestinian leader has decades-long ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization and even played a financial role behind the terrorist attacks against Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Germany.

So with Middle East talks breaking down and the U.S. and others placing the lion’s share of the blame for that upon Israel, what can we expect in the near future?

“Terror with a big ‘T’.  Al Qaeda is embedded in Hamas, so now what did they just get?  They just got a free ticket to Bethlehem and Jericho.  They just got a free ticket to Ramallah.  So Al Qaeda is going to start circling Israel big time.  You’re going to have an acceleration of terror,” said Evans.

“Abbas has just played the terror card.  And Kerry just played the (Neville) Chamberlain card.  He basically told Hamas, ‘Oh, I understand.  I feel your pain.’  He sided with terror against the state of Israel.  So it’s going to accelerate terror.  It’s going to accelerate it against Jews globally.  It’s going to accelerate against the state of Israel,” said Evans.

“Thank you, John Kerry.  Wonderful job you did going over there and kissing up to those terrorists.  Once they pull out their swords and their guns, then you side with them against the only democracy in the Middle East.  Wonderful.  Lovely,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see the mainstream media ever so slightly begin to drop their instinct to protect President Obama at all times.  They also groan as Secretary of State John Kerry warms Israel could be an apartheid state if it doesn’t come back to Middle East peace negotiations.  And they slam House GOP leaders for vowing not to repeal Obamacare and to predict immigration reform passage this year.

Americans are ready to kick a big, intrusive government to the curb, but they’re waiting for a credible alternative to the two-party approach that got us into this mess, according to FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe.

Kibbe is author of the new book, “Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.”  He admits that reversing the tide of big government will be a massive task even if the right people get into office.  He is also wading into the divisive conservative debates over America’s role in the world and whether elected conservative leaders ought to be championing traditional family values.

In his book, Kibbe says the fundamental principles of limited government should boil down to six principles.  In addition to not hurting people and seizing their property, he extols the values of personal responsibility and and hard work, while encouraging everyone to mind their own business and “fight the power” of government when it exceeds its constitutional boundaries.

Kibbe also prescribes a 12-step solution to restoring liberty to the people, with ideas ranging from the government not spending more than it takes in and scrapping the income tax to personal choice in education and health care to placing much greater limits on the government’s ability to invade our privacy.

Despite the growth of government both long-term and in recent years, Kibbe is optimistic that enough Americans are fed up with Washington that real change is possible.  However, he says it will take a unique confluence of events to make it happen, and while he is no fan of the Republican Party, Kibbe thinks it still needs to be part of the answer.

“Ronald Reagan said in 1975 that the heart and soul of conservatism is libertarian.  The next year, remember, he primaried a sitting Republican president (Gerald Ford).  Everyone predicted he would destroy the party.  In fact, the opposite happened.  He kind of cleaned out the barn and restored a certain sense of standing for something within the GOP,” said Kibbe.  “I think that has to happen again today and I think there a lot of independents and Democrats with buyer’s remorse.  And there’s a lot of small ‘L’ libertarians that would vote against the big government party of the Democrats if they found a home.

“Some political entrepreneur needs to offer that up, but I think we’re going to have to beat the Republicans before we beat the Democrats,” said Kibbe.

But Kibbe admits rolling back big government will take a long, committed effort.  First, he says the unnecessary complexity of the federal bureaucracy is great for entrenched politicians and special interests and bad for the average citizen.

“You see this with Obamacare.  You see it with the IRS and the very complex campaign finance rules that Lois Lerner used to target mom and pop tea partiers.  It wasn’t equally applied and in this world of complexity, all of us are probably breaking some small piece of the federal register that we don’t even know.  We don’t even know that the rule exists.  And that shifts power away from us to them.  It also happens to benefit all of the interests that come to Washington looking for a special deal.  Incumbent firms love to lobby for more complexity in finance regulations and in the ability of new firms to enter the marketplace,” said Kibbe.

Kibbe warns that because of the deliberate complexity of the federal bureaucracy, reversing the tide will require a long and sustained effort, regardless of who wins elections.  But he says approaching reform with simplicity is definitely the way to go.

“On the spending side, agree to how much we’re going to spend and then put everything on the table.  On the regulatory side, I think it makes sense on really bad ideas like Obamacare and Sarbanes-Oxley (financial regulatory reforms), a lot of these failed, super-complicated regulatory regimes, pull it out by the roots.  Agree what you’re trying to accomplish and then set out something that’s simple,” said Kibbe.

“There are simple solutions to health care that give patients more control that would actually create competition for scarce dollars.  We don’t have to write a 7,000-page bill.  We could do it with some simple changes to the tax code, but that takes away Washington’s power and that’s why it doesn’t happen,” said Kibbe.

Before confronting the federal leviathan, however, there are some major points of division on the right, both among conservatives and between conservatives and libertarians.  The biggest sticking points center on America’s role in the world and whether the right ought to be champions of traditional values like the right to life and traditional marriage and the nuclear family.

On the international stage, Kibbe believes strong leadership on a limited number of issues essential to American security is preferable to how U.S. foreign policy has been conducted lately.

“I think Barack Obama’s a great example of what you don’t do because he’s combined a lack of leadership with a weakening of our economy and a running up of our debt,” said Kibbe.

“I’m with Reagan on this.  I lean libertarian.  I think we should be careful about getting involved in things like Syrian civil wars because it doesn’t make sense and the practical outcomes matter a lot.  We don’t have a good track record there.  But if we don’t have the money and we don’t have an economy that exports freedom and actually produces energy…we’re not going to be anyone’s world leader.  You can talk a good game but I think the fundamentals are more important,” said Kibbe.

“Everybody took Ronald Reagan seriously and it wasn’t because he was rolling the tanks.  It’s because he represented a country that said what it believed and actually was strong in the face of Soviet oppression,” he said.

Social conservatives may have the biggest disagreement with Kibbe, who believes that morality issues should be decided in families, communities and private institutions like churches in synagogues.  He believes government shouldn’t be in the business of advocating anything when it comes to moral issues like the definition of marriage.  He also contends the Faith Based Initiatives of President George W. Bush quickly devolved into a scrum for federal handouts, handouts that are now going to to very progressive organizations under the Obama administration.

“When you give Washington the authority to intervene in the really important things that you believe, expect that they might do exactly the opposite of what you want them to.  Wouldn’t it be better to pursue freedom to allow you to raise your kids the way that you think is right instead of imposing Common Core from the top down.  Wouldn’t it be better to not have Washington, D.C. opine on my marriage.  I personally found it offensive that I had to get the government’s permission to get married 27 years ago.  I think people are waking up to this.  These guys can’t even balance the budget.  Do we really think they can define marriage in a better way than we could for ourselves?” asked Kibbe.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy the new ad from Arkansas GOP Senate hopeful Tom Cotton, in which Cotton jabs Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor for saying Cotton feels entitled to a Senate seat just because he served in the military.  They also enjoy DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz trying to defend the latest Obama administration delay of the Keystone XL pipeline.  And they chronicle Charlie Crist’s career pattern of flip-flopping on abortion.

The Obama administration is again delaying a decision on whether to approve the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a move Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry says is nothing more than a gift to the environmental lobby that could force Canada to abandon the U.S. as a partner on this critical project.

“The hardcore greens came out a couple months ago, after the final environmental impact study was ruled as a final study by the State Department.  They held a press conference saying, ‘We will boycott the 2014 elections if the president signs this.’  The president knows.  His brain is telling him that it has to be signed.  There’s just no good reason to deny the permit except for the political pressures that are on him from his far left,” said Terry, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“So (the administration) found another creative, meaningless way to just delay signing that permit until after the elections,” he said.

If this is just a political calculation, the environmental lobby appears to carry more weight inside the White House than Democratic lawmakers from right-leaning states and even multiple labor unions anxious to get to work on the pipeline.  At least 11 Democrats in the U.S. Senate have publicly urged Obama to green-light the pipeline and unions like the Laborers International Union of America (LIUNA).

Terry says there is enough support in the Senate to break a filibuster and maybe even override an Obama veto of the pipeline.  He says the fight inside organized labor is a bit more complex.

“It’s the trade unions that will go to work at good middle class wages, but those are the ones that the president’s throwing under the bus, a bus probably driven by a Teamster who would actually benefit from this project.  The reality is the major political unions today, like the SEIU and the government employees, they’re standing with the green organizations opposing this pipeline,” said Terry.

Terry also noted Democratic super donor Tom Steyer has promised to raise $100 million for Democrats to make climate change a major issue this year, but only if Keystone doesn’t happen.

Despite more than five years of evaluation and final environmental approval by Obama’s own State Department, the administration says it needs more time before rendering a final decision.  One reason it says is to carefully consider a large number of public comments solicited on the issue.  It also claims the route of the pipeline is still up in the air after a federal judge in Nebraska rejected it.

“That is an invalid excuse.  There’s just no basis to delay the pipeline because of that.  First of all, that decision is so faulty that it was immediately stayed by law.  Secondly, go ahead and start construction of the pipeline in Montana and South Dakota before they resolve these issues,” said Terry.

“The court case would not interfere with the construction of the pipeline.  So it’s really a faux reason.  You have to fall back on what I think it is and it’s all politics,” said Terry, who says outside of the political money at stake Obama is stuck between his personal aversion to such energy products and the inability to come up with a good reason to reject it.

And the congressman is doubtful that Obama will ever make a decision on the pipeline.

“I don’t know how to figure this president out, especially on issues like this.  I think in his heart he would like to veto it or not sign it but he also knows that there really isn’t a good reason to kill it and that he should sign it.  When all their environmental studies, all of them, came out and said that it would actually reduce carbon emissions by using a pipeline instead of hauling it on rail or trucks.  I would think that the environmentalists would want it, but they won’t and I don’t think the president wants to sign it either,” said Terry.

While the clock ticks on the Obama administration, it’s also ticking on Canada, where the government and energy producer TransCanada have made it clear they’ll ship the oil to China if the U.S. doesn’t want it.

“I had a conversation just a few weeks ago with the ambassador from Canada.  He said they’re already going forward with the pipeline to the east and the right-of-way is already all reserved now for a pipeline from Alberta to the west coast and there’s probably going to be two to the west coast (for shipping to China).  So Canada is already implementing Plan B as we speak.  The issue is whether or not the United States is ever going to adopt the Keystone XL so that it goes to our refineries and creates jobs and prosperity along the route,” said Terry.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer the growing buzz about Indiana Gov. Mike Pence possibly running for president.  They also react to the news more than half of Georgia’s Obamacare enrollees have yet to pay their first premium.  And they discuss NBC going so far as to bring in a psychologist to figure out why ratings for ‘Meet the Press’ are so low.