With national security officials warning of possible shoe bomb attacks on international flights, the Capitol Steps blow the dust off a song from the early days of the War on Terror. Our guest is Steps co-founder and star Elaina Newport.
Three Martini Lunch 2/21/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Alec Torres of National Review cautiously welcome West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin’s vow to back repeal of Obamacare. They also shudder as a new report shows far more black babies were aborted than born alive in New York City in 2012. And they discuss how liberals are now targeting e-cigarettes.
Obama’s Tea Party Cousin Seeks Senate Seat
President Obama and Dr. Milton Wolf are second cousins, but that may be the end of the similarities as Wolf runs to the right of incumbent Republican Sen. Pat Roberts in the Kansas GOP primary.
The 42-year-old Wolf is a diagnostic radiologist. He admits he didn’t know he was related to Obama until 2008 and didn’t meet him until they were health care policy adversaries in 2010. Wolf says being related to a president would be a great experience if Obama weren’t so far left in his ideology.
“Of course, who wouldn’t be honored to have a president in your family and sit on the front row of history. We’re related, of course I remind people you cannot choose your family,” said Wolf. “Barack Obama is the worst president in our lifetimes if not in our history. He has been a disaster. It’s nothing personal but his policies have been disastrous in America.
“It’s mostly because he either doesn’t understand or has forgotten what America is all about. The American idea itself is about individual liberty, limited government and free market values. When we have embraced those we have become the most prosperous and powerful nation in history, and when we abandon those we suffer. We have suffered under Barack Obama,” he said.
Wolf is making no secret he would be a fierce opponent of President Obama in Washington. The home page of his campaign website reads, “Want to drive Barack Obama crazy? Send his very own fearless conservative cousin — ‘the next Ted Cruz’ — to the United States Senate!”
Wolf says he touts himself as the next Ted Cruz because he believes the freshman Texas senator is approaching his office the right way while Sen. Roberts is not.
“we need more senators like Ted Cruz, like Mike Lee, like Rand Paul. They stand by the Constitution fearlessly, unapologetically. They don’t need an election year conversion because they’re the real deal,” said Wolf. “Pat Roberts, in an amazing election year conversion, is following the leadership of Ted Cruz, who’s only been there for one year,” said Wolf. “That’s because Ted Cruz understand something that Pat Roberts has never quite figured out – that a United States senator should have something more powerful than just a vote. He should have a voice, and he should use that voice. He should stand up and fight for our Constitution and for that American idea itself.
“Instead, what we have in our establishment Republicans are these go along to get along Republicans. Pat Roberts voted for Barack Obama’s $600 million tax increase just a year ago. He’s voted to raise our debt ceiling 11 times. And Pat Roberts voted to put Kathleen Sebelius in charge of Obamacare. That’s not conservative, it’s not good for Kansas and it’s not good for America,” said Wolf.
Defenders of Roberts counter Wolf’s arguments by asserting Roberts spent many years of his Senate tenure in key intelligence committee positions that were not conducive to bold public statements. They also note he was one of only 18 Republicans to oppose the spending bill that ended last year’s partial government shutdown and that he was the first U.S. senator to publicly call for the resignation of Sebelius.
“He only bothered to say Kathleen Sebelius should resign three days after I announced my candidacy. The Kansas City Star reported on it and said, ‘If you think those two facts are unrelated, you probably think the Kansas Jayhawks are going to win the national championship this year in football,'” said Wolf, who says voters need to take a close look at Roberts’ voting record throughout his Senate tenure and not just leading up to elections.
“He claims to be in the top five conservatives in the Senate. That’s according to Heritage Action. What he doesn’t want you to know is his lifetime score from Heritage Action, which is a 67. Before I came along, in 2012 Pat Roberts had a 65 from Heritage Action. Before I came along, in 2012 Pat Roberts had a 55 from Club for Growth and a 54 from FreedomWorks. That is not a conservative. That is somebody who is going along to get along, and that’s been the problem with our Republican Party,” said Wolf.
So what qualifies Wolf for the Senate and what would his priorities be if elected?
“I confess I don’t have the Washington experience Pat Roberts has. I’ve never voted to raise your taxes. I’ve never spent trillions of dollars that aren’t mine and I’ve never paid $800 for a toilet seat. But what I have done is this. I have met payroll. I have balanced budgets. I have run a company and, far more importantly, I know every day what it’s like to have patients come to me and put their lives in my hands and ask me to make the humbling, sometimes gut-wrenching decisions that are the difference between life and death. That’s the kind of humility I think Washington lacks,” said Wolf.
His top legislative priority is PatientCare, his plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a system based on conservative principles.
“We need to fully repeal Obamacare, and we need to replace it with patient-centered, free market health care reform that’s being described as, by far, the best alternative to Obamacare,” said Wolf.
Wolf is not only running against a three-term incumbent, but the state’s other senator, Jerry Moran, runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). That’s the group tasked with re-electing Republican senators and recruit candidates to run for Democratically-held seats. Wolf says Kansas is in no danger of falling to the Democrats, so the NRSC should stay out of the primary. He says if it doesn’t, it will show the group is not about electing conservatives but simply protecting incumbents.
Three Martini Lunch 2/20/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are encouraged by research showing low popularity ratings for a president usually means terrible results for his party in midterm Senate races. They also rip President Obama for not aligning the U.S. on the side of Ukrainian freedom fighters and for issuing another hollow warning to both sides about not crossing the line in the current standoff. And they pound a GOP lawmaker in Missouri for appropriating money to fund tin foil hats for the opponents of the Common Core educational standards.
‘It’s Hard Not to Do It’
The debate over whether to raise the minimum wage is front and center this week as a Congressional Budget Office report gives political ammunition to both sides, and a former Clinton administration budget official says the benefits of the hike so easily outweigh the downside that “it’s hard not to do it.”
In his State of the Union message, President Obama urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, saying it is simply wrong for any Americans to be working hard and still living in poverty.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a report showing that following Obama’s plan would result in 900,000 people rising out of poverty and 16.5 million people benefiting from the wage hike. The CBO also projected the move would cost the economy between 500,000 and one million jobs.
Larry Haas served as spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration. He says the CBO report should make the question of raising the minimum wage a no-brainer.
“What’s really startling about this report is that while it acknowledges some job loss, the corresponding benefits so greatly outweigh the costs that it almost looks like it’s hard not to do it,” said Haas.
Haas admits the job losses could negatively impact the same amount of people that would supposedly escape from poverty following a minimum wage increase, but he says other factors would still make such a move a net positive.
“We are talking about costs versus benefits, and just in raw number terms, even if we talk about closer to a million (jobs eliminated) as offset by the close to a million who would rise above the poverty level and you consider that to be somewhat of a wash. I’m not minimizing the job loss, but if you consider just the raw dollars, you look and just go to the second level of this and see all the other low-wage workers who would get a benefit out of this as employers naturally raised their wages, 16.5 million people,” said Haas.
“At the end of the day, you look at any proposal and you say, ‘OK, where’s the good? Where’s the bad, and where does this come out? While I don’t minimize the job loss, I look at these raw numbers and I have to say, you know what, this would be a net benefit to society and to working people writ large,” he said.
Republicans and other conservatives are largely opposed to Obama’s call for a minimum wage increase and are loudly highlighting the CBO’s projected job losses if the plan were to become law. Instead of raising wages for the lowest skilled jobs, they argue for reduced corporate taxes, deregulation and rolling back employer obligations on programs like Obamacare.
Haas embraces some of those ideas while dismissing others but says a hike in the minimum wage can be done alongside some of the GOP’s ideas.
“I don’t necessarily disagree with all their approaches. I do think that the corporate tax is too high by way of international competitiveness. I do think that there are always opportunities to reduce regulation. On Obamacare, I think their concerns are, frankly, overstated and in many ways misconstrue what’s happening,” said Haas. “Just because we have other possible ways of promoting economic growth and spurring jobs doesn’t mean we should dismiss this one.”
And Haas believes a bump in the minimum wage is the only politically realistic move in the near future.
“The fact of the matter is that Obamacare is not going to be repealed. The fact of the matter is we’re not going to see tax reform anytime soon, just because of the politics on the Hill. The administration will either reduce regulations or they won’t. This is the issue before us at the moment. Congress can act. The president can sign it into law. I think that the case is very compelling. Whether we do any of the other things that would spur growth and create jobs, we should do this,” said Haas.
Another major point of contention in this debate is who actually earns the minimum wage. Is it largely moms and dads who cannot find other work and rely on those wages to support families or is it mostly teenagers and other young people who will later find higher-skilled and better paying jobs? Haas strongly believes it’s the former.
“Those who oppose a minimum wage increase tend to overstate the number of so-called teenagers who are just working side jobs and this really isn’t their livelihood and we really don’t need to give them a boost. I can’t break it down in percentage terms, but the fact of the matter is that a very large share of minimum wage workers is the single mom with the kid or two or three, who’s trying to scrape by and who may have more than one job and having trouble making ends meet with the child care expenses that she needs to pay,” said Haas.
“Those are really the people we’ve got to worry about in this kind of an economy where we see such long-term unemployment and such lingering unemployment from the Great Recession. Anyone who really thinks this is about teenagers is just missing the boat,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 2/19/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are excited about Russia’s Olympic hockey defeat. They also discuss the new Congressional Budget Office report and how a minimum wage hike impacts jobs. Finally, they praise James O’Keefe and Project Veritas for their latest investigation into the allegedly illegal actions of Battleground Texas.
Where’s the U.S. as Ukraine Burns?
Recent Ukrainian unrest reached its deadliest levels yet on Tuesday, as protesters and police officers were killed, fires raged in Kiev and a nation divided moved closer to a national tipping point.
Ukraine is closely divided between Russian-speaking residents largely loyal to Moscow and native-speaking western Ukraine, which identified with Europe and largely despises Russia for its decades of control during the days of the USSR.
The latest volatility stems from Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejecting an opportunity to establish closer economic ties with the European Union and subsequently accepting bailout assistance from Russia. Protests that followed were met with new laws restricting protest rights and even a ban on citizens wearing helmets.
Former Reagan administration Pentagon official Frank Gaffney says the people have very good reasons to be in the streets.
“There’s obvious frustration on the part of the people of Ukraine with their government, with the policies it’s been pursuing, particularly to the degree to which it is acceding to what can only be described as domination by Russia. I think there’s also a growing restiveness about the growing repression at home and the corruption of their government,” said Gaffney.
Now that the protests have evolved into violent clashes between protesters and police, Gaffney says violent repression of the protesters is possible but he believes the more likely scenario is for Ukraine to reach a tipping point towards freedom.
The United States is currently taking a hands-off approach, urging both sides to resolve their differences peacefully. Gaffney says neutrality has no place in this dispute. He says the U.S. policy should be obviously and boldly stated.
“We need to be unquestioningly and unmistakably aligned with those who aspire to freedom from the tyranny that they’ve been subjected to, the arbitrary, the corrupt and the increasingly repressive tyranny of Yanukovych,” said Gaffney.
“I think it is important to take sides and straddling the fence as the Obama administration is wont to do, or worse aligning with the oppressors either out of some misplaced belief that this will buy us some benefit the Russians in this reset policy of the president’s or that it will enable us to have some sort of dialogue with the government of the state, in this case Ukraine, that is engaging in such repression. I think this is a mistake, both strategically and certainly morally,” said Gaffney.
What is at stake in terms of U.S. national security interests? What would be the result of the protesters being defeated, with or without physical assistance of the Russians?
“It is probably a step in the direction of Vladimir Putin’s longstanding goal of reconstituting, effectively if not technically, the old Soviet Union. He has been beavering away at this for several years, using his kleptocracy to cultivate the old power structures and relationships of the previous regime. Incrementally, he has made headway in bringing people to heel who have sought their independence, who have gained their independence in places like Georgia, to the point where that independence is increasingly a thing of the past,” said Gaffney.
“This is not good for the people most immediately involved. I’m afraid it will be detrimental to the free world more broadly and to us as well,” said Gaffney.
Three Martini Lunch 2/18/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are happy about the Democratic campaign strategy of trying to spin Obamacare as a good thing. They also rip into the Obama administration’s attempt to present the stimulus as a success. Finally, they react to conservative attempts to defeat Sen. Lindsey Graham in the primary.
Schlafly Unloads on Amnesty, Gay Marriage
The woman who vanquished the Equal Rights Amendment more than a generation ago is now focused on stopping what she considers amnesty for people in the country illegally, who will never vote Republican and often don’t respect America’s founding principles.
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly is also disgusted by the recent spate of federal judges striking down voter-approved laws and state constitutional amendments that define marriage only as the union of one man and one woman.
On the issue of immigration, Schalfly compiled the results from a number of recent independent polls on her eagleforum.org website. She says the consistent results are proof positive that making illegal immigrants U.S. citizens will lead to greater advancement of the liberal agenda.
“These millions of foreigners coming in will of course take jobs from Americans, for one thing. But they are not going to vote conservative. They’re all going to vote for big government because that’s what they believe in. A lot of these polls show exactly that and they corroborate each other,” said Schlafly.
“Pew found that 75 percent of Hispanic immigrants and 55 percent of Asian immigrants, who are the two largest groups, want a bigger government providing more services. Now you ask any Republican or conservative if that’s what he wants, he’s going to say no, but only 19 percent of Hispanics and 36 percent of Asians want a smaller government,” she said. “So why is it any surprise that 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama in 2012. It’s no surprise. That’s the way it is.”
In addition to the leftward political bent of most immigrants, Schlafly says the polling data also indicates a troubling lack of respect among them for our Constitution.
“One poll showed that 67 percent, that’s two-thirds, of native-born citizens think our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law, but only a third of naturalized citizens share that view. Naturalized citizens have already taken a solemn oath to renounce all of their connections and allegiance to where they came from. And yet they’re coming in here thinking international law should trump our Constitution. Give me a break!” said Schlafly.
The push for comprehensive immigration reform appears to be on hold. Just days after he and other House GOP leaders unveiled their principles for reform, House Speaker john Boehner recently announced nothing would be moving forward because a large percentage of Republican lawmakers simply don’t trust President Obama to faithfully enforce provisions with which he disagrees.
Schlafly is encouraged by the delay but says opponents are fighting a tough battle against elements in both parties.
“I hope he’ll never bring it up because what is mislabeled reform is actually amnesty and the lobbyists who are for this type of amnesty are very powerful and very well-financed. The Democrats are for it because they know it will create more Democratic Party votes. It’s the big business Republicans who want the cheap labor,” said Schlafly.
National Republican Party leaders see things very differently. In the Republican National Committee’s report on the 2012 elections, the only policy recommendation was passage of comprehensive immigration reform. In addition to advocating tighter border security, greater e-verify enforcement and a robust guest worker visa program, the party also believes it needs to find a way to connect with the nation’s fastest-growing demographic.
GOP officials say the issue may not be the only thing that matters to Latino voters but until Republicans address it in a substantive way, it will be nearly impossible to start a dialogue on many other issues that might otherwise attract Latinos to the party.
Schlafly isn’t buying it.
“(RNC Chairman Reince) Priebus is part of the establishment and we have another ‘choice not an echo’ fight between the establishment Republicans, who are mostly the big business and the internationalist Republicans, against the grassroots. The grassroots is almost solidly against this amnesty they mislabel reform. It isn’t reform at all. It’s amnesty. It’s letting in as many people as possible. And there’s no good argument for it,” said Schlafly.
Even the most liberal advocates of immigration reform insist they are not in favor of amnesty. So what do they mean by “amnesty” and what does Schlafly mean?
“When I say amnesty, I mean any of these different views that are mislabeled reform. Anything Chuck Schumer’s for, we should be against.That’s why we encouraged the House never to go into conference with him, because Schumer would just out-talk anybody else,” said Schlafly.
Schlafly is also one of the nation’s leading voices on social conservative issues. She is incensed that federal judges are creating a pattern of overturning voter-approved constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Since December, judges in Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia have struck down amendments. A judge in Kentucky recently ordered the commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, despite voters explicitly giving the state power to reject them.
Many of the judges are basing their rulings on last June’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on United States v. Windsor, which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and found that the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages in states where it is legal. The justices did not address DOMA’s provisions allowing states to set their own definitions of marriage and decide whether they would recognize marriages same-sex marriages performed in other states.
“Judges are thinking they’re trying to be on the right side of history, but they’re not and I think what they’re doing is not constitutional. The Windsor case that they’re relying on did not uphold same-sex marriage, but they’re all acting like it did and made it the law of the land. It is not the law of the land,” said Schlafly.
“It was 35 states I believe that have voted for marriage to be one man and one woman. They’re ignoring that and that Utah decision was particularly outrageous and contrary to everything we know is right and just in this country. Several years ago, I wrote my book called ‘The Supremacists’, about how these judges are getting to think they are God Almighty and can do anything they want,” said Schlafly.
“What Obama says he going to do anything he wants now, the judges have been doing for years and they label it under the words living Constitution,” she said. “I think the American people have got to stop this dictatorial attitude of Obama, who thinks he can do anything by executive order and the judges who think they can do anything they want by calling it a living Constitution.”
Three Martini Lunch 2/17/14
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss whether a GOP focus on Bill Clinton’s legacy (including Monica Lewinsky) is legitimate for the 2016 campaign. They also elaborate on reports of the highest political donors of the last 25 years being dominated by organized labor. Finally, they poke fun at the hypocrisy of John Kerry’s comments on climate change in light of the carbon emissions of his current trip.