Archives for November 2014

With just hours until the polls close in the very tight New Hampshire U.S. Senate race, newly revealed memos indicate incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen was in direct communication with one of President Obama’s most trusted IRS officials about increasing the agency’s scrutiny  of conservative organizations applying for tax-exempt status and the chairwoman of New Hampshire’s Republican Party says the news is reverberating across the Granite State.

“People are talking about it all over the state, of course.  It is shocking to see that our own United States Senator Jeanne Shaheen engaged in this sort of behavior, using a federal agency, the IRS, to target American citizens for their political beliefs,” said New Hampshire GOP chairwoman Jennifer Horn.  “We haven’t seen anything like this, as you know, since the Nixon era.  It’s shocking and disappointing to all of us in New Hampshire.”

The memos obtained by The Daily Caller show that Shaheen was in direct contact with IRS Chief Counsel William J. Wilkins, who has previously been labeled “the president’s man at the IRS.”  It appears the contact started in March 2012, when Shaheen wrote to Wilkins on behalf of a small group of Democratic senators, including Chuck Schumer of New York and Al Franken of Minnesota.

In the letter, Shaheen aggressively urged Wilkins and others at the IRS to change the standards by which groups self-identifying as “social welfare organizations” would be judged for tax-exempt status.  According to The Daily Caller, the senator called for setting limits on political spending for the groups and mandating that a majority of total spending must be on non-political matters.  She also wanted the IRS to get much more detailed information about how the groups were financed and place restrictions on how much donations to the organizations could be written off.

In April 2012, Shaheen got a response from Wilkins:

“We will consider proposed changes in this area as we work with Tax-Exempt and Government Entities and the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy to identify tax issues that should be addressed,” he wrote

Horn says Shaheen already had baggage on this issue but this memo proves her involvement even further.

“We’ve been talking about this issue throughout this race.  The senator signed the letter.  She was one of just a handful of senators who thought it was appropriate to send the letter to the IRS, asking them to target these conservative organizations.  So out voters are well aware of it.  Obviously this brings it a step further, which is why it is reverberating the way that it is here,” said Horn.

“What this new memo exposes to us is the level of coordination that appeared to be taking place between the IRS and Sen. Shaheen on these issues.  This is something that is very serious and will continue to grow and be a problem long after this election is over.  All we can hope is that folks in New Hampshire get out and make sure that when she’s investigated for this, it’s not as a sitting U.S. senator from New Hampshire,” said Horn.

However, Chairwoman Horn is also a an issue herself in the final days of the campaign for comments Democrats allege amount to advocating violence.  On Sunday, at a rally attended by GOP Senate nominee Scott Brown, gubernatorial nominee Walt Havenstein and congressional candidates Frank Guinta and Marilinda Garcia, Horn implored Republican supporters to make this as big of a wave election as possible and continued to push the metaphor.

““This is our time. We need to crush it. We need to grab it, run with it, push their heads under over and over again until they cannot breathe anymore, until the elections are over on Tuesday night and we’ve won it all,” said Horn on Sunday.

New Hampshire Democrats immediately pounced.

“This type of inflammatory language tells you everything that you need to know about the status of the New Hampshire Republican Party,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Communications Director Julie McClain said in an emailed statement to msnbc. “There’s no excuse for this kind of violent rhetoric.”

Horn says she was never advocating violence and Democrats are simply trying to distract voters any way they can.

“It was a get out the vote rally with hundreds and hundreds of our best activists.  In the larger context, we were talking about a wave and how you make waves happen.  There’s clearly no intention there and no suggestion for harm to anybody, said Horn.  “The likely reason that the Democrats would like to chat about that is, honestly, a desperate attempt on the eve of an election that’s just not going the way they hoped it would go.”

Horn says the GOP ground game is better than ever and she’s cautiously optimistic about Brown pulling off the upset of Shaheen tonight.  However, she says it’s simply too close to call.

As Democrats make women’s issues the center of many statewide races around the country and allege Republicans want to take away their personal freedoms, conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly says President Obama is the one truly guilty of waging a ‘war on women’ for suggesting mothers who stay at home to raise their kids are making a choice the government does not approve.

She also says this attitude from the political left is nothing new, but despite decades of demeaning stay-at-home moms, she says more and more women see the value in leaving the workforce for a time to invest in their kids.

Schlafly’s comments are latest in the firestorm of criticism following Obama’s remarks Friday in Rhode Island.  While stumping for the Democratic candidate for governor, Obama lobbied for higher quality day care options at lower prices but clearly left the suggestion that placing kids in day care is preferable to moms or dads staying home to raise them while the other spouse works outside the home.

“Sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make,” Obama told the crowd.

After years of Democrats accusing Republicans of holding women back, Schlafly says it’s the Democrats who are once again showing their true, hostile colors to moms.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous to say that Republicans are waging a war on women.  Obama’s speech in Rhode Island shows that he’s the one starting a war on women,” said Schlafly, the founder and president of Eagle Forum best known for leading the grassroots effort to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s and 80s.

“Who gave Obama the right to decide what career choice women will be allowed to make.  What kind of country do we live in.  We assume he’s speaking for the administration and the evidence is abundant that he meant exactly what he said.  He does not want women to have the choice to take care of their own children or got take a job and put their kids in day care,” she said.

As infuriating as Obama’s comments are to Schlafly, she says he’s not saying anything the feminist movement hasn’t been pushing for generations.

“He wants to deprive women of the choice of taking care of their own children.  He’s not the first one to say that.  That is straight down the line feminist ideology.  In fact, it was first said by that big mama of women’s lib, Simone de Beauvoir, who taught all the college courses as a founder of feminism.  [She] said, ‘No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise their children, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one and we don’t believe any women should have that choice,'” said Schlafly.

Schlafly said the attitude of the feminist movement toward moms who stay at home to raise their kids is one of disgust and disdain.

“[De Beauvoir] thinks any woman who stays at home with her kids is a parasite and we’ve got to get her out in the workforce, so she can pay taxes and the government can take care of her kids,” said Schlafly.

“The feminists have always wanted to have all kids in day care.  They tell women that taking care of small children is belittling and not worthy of the time and talent of an educated woman.  [Obama] has completely adopted the feminist line,” said Schlafly, asserting that feminists and other liberals are always in favor of growing government and making people dependent upon it and subsidized day care and universal pre-kindergarten are current examples of that.

According to Schlafly, feminists are failing in their efforts to convince women that rearing children full-time is a waste of their time.

“The number of women who are wanting to stay home, at least when their kids are young, is increasing.  The percentage is getting bigger.  This must befuddle the feminists quite a bit,” she said.

In addition, Schlafly asserts that scholars are observing a rise in hypergamy, which is the practice of intentionally marrying someone who makes enough money to provide for the family so one spouse (usually the wife) can stay home with the children.

She says other studies prove the long-term value of a parent staying at home to raise and educate their children.

“We’ve spent all this money on public schools.  They’ve been saying for years that the reason for the gap between the high-achieving and the low-achieving kids is poverty.  Now, the new information is gap is whether they have a mother and father or not.  That’s what makes the difference between the high-achieving and the low-achieving kids,” said Schlafly.

Not surprisingly, Schlafly is hopeful that conservatives will score major victories in elections across the country on Tuesday, particularly in the Republican Party’s quest to control the U.S. Senate.  She says GOP control is critical for one reason above all the others.

“This election is going to decide who controls the Supreme Court.  There’ll be some upcoming appointments and we don’t want Obama to have any more.  He’s already packed the court as well as he can.  We don’t want him having any more appointments to the Supreme Court,” said Schlafly.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Tavis Smiley for pointing out blacks and Hispanics are doing far worse than the rest of the population under President Obama yet they are being browbeaten to go vote for Democrats anyway.  They also slap their foreheads as Mitt Romney says comprehensive immigration reform will get done if Republicans take the Senate.  They slam retiring Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin for claiming Joni Ernst is doing well only because she’s attractive and nice.  And Greg and Jim offer their midterm predictions.