Morning Briefing
For February 7, 2013
1. The Tipping Point
There is no permanence in politics. Democrats patting themselves on the back at a job well done will at some point be drowning their sorrows in beer as Republicans again talk about their ridiculous fantasy of a permanent Republican majority (this time without steel tariffs).
People shift over time. Pendulums swing. And in the age of instantly lame ducked Presidents upon their swearing in for a second term, discord has ways of getting the best of any political party.
Conservatives who rallied to George W. Bush through No Child Left Behind, steel tariffs, Medicare Part D, Harriet Miers, etc. stood with him until the end. Many held on through TARP and the auto bailout and immigration, unable to see the fractures or trying to will them away. Now the GOP is dealing with the fall out of that legacy.
Consider the suspicion conservative groups have of Bush’s architect, Karl Rove, starting a new group supposedly to support “the most electable conservative”. Conservatives are still trying to work their way back out of the Republican Party and stand up on their own again.
With the 22nd amendment, a President’s second term is about securing his legacy. His party has no chance to throw him out in a third term primary. So the party rallies to make the best of it and help him secure his legacy. It happened with Reagan and Clinton and the second Bush. It is happening now with Barack Obama.
We should not ignore, though, that there is a disturbance in the Democratic force. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. Southern Poverty Law Center Inspires Floyd Lee Corkins’ Attempted Mass Shooting
When Congresswoman Giffords and several others were shot in Arizona by Jared Loughner, the left went into overdrive blaming Sarah Palin for a map that had a list of political targets on it.
After the fact, we learned that Lochner was a-political and he clearly had not used Sarah Palin’s map of political targets. That did not stop the left from blaming the right. In fact, I was on CNN with an overwrought Cornell Belcher shortly after the shooting who was outraged. He said we could not equate anything on the left with the violence of the tea party despite evidence to the contrary.
In fact, most networks spent a lot of time on the subject of hate, Sarah Palin’s political target map, and political violence.
I’m willing to bet the media will ignore today’s news.
Floyd Lee Corkins, II, who shot a security guard at the Family Research Center as he attempted to shoot up the organization was directly inspired to take action by a list of supposed “hate groups” on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. Peeking Into the Legal Immigration Numbers
We’ve spent a lot of time focusing on illegal immigration policy, both from an enforcement standpoint and from a welfare perspective. It’s also important to delve into our current legal immigration process in preparation for any wholesale reforms of our broader system.
From listening to proponents of open borders, you would get the impression that we barely admit any new legal immigrants, and as such, the only practical way for people to come here is by breaking our laws. The reality is just the opposite. We have granted more people permanent legal resident status over the past 15 years than in any other period in American history, including the turn of the 20th century when the country was still relatively young and growing. Moreover, a massive share of the recent immigration has been from developing or third world countries, particularly the very native countries of most illegal immigrants. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4. It’s the Messaging, Stupid. It’s the Stupid Messaging.
As many have already discussed, Karl Rove has launched an organization, the Conservative Victory Group, that purports to work on behalf of conservative candidates to shore up our numbers in Congress and bring our party into the 21st century.
Like many others, I viewed this as the political equivalent of declaring war on the grassroots.
The New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny set off the fireworks with his opening paragraph introducing the world to Rove’s group, writing that it will work “to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.”
He then quoted American Crossroads’ President, Steven J. Law, as saying that we are losing candidates because the “wrong candidates were selected.” An astoundingly astute observation supported by the fact that we lost. One can only assume that Law is referring to Mitt Romney as well. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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