Morning Briefing
For July 18, 2013
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1. ‘This Town’ Needs an Enema
Mark
Leibovich of the New York Times has written a pretty scathing book about
Washington, DC, called This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus,
Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital. It is a pretty
accurate portrayal of the Washington, DC more and more Americans have
come to hold in contempt. There exists in Washington a new aristocracy
where, for example, a poor boxer from Searchlight, NV, can get elected
to the United States Senate, become wealthy enough to live at the Ritz,
and see his family profit from K Street.
It is a city where the new aristocrats move and do not want to leave. It is a town in need of an enema.
Consider the Republicans in the United States Senate up for re-election in 2014. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. Fear of the Missing White Voters
RealClearPolitics
election analyst Sean Trende has come under coordinated red-hot
rhetorical fire from the Left for his thesis that one of the major
causes of Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 was that a disproportionate number
of white voters – mostly downscale whites outside the South – stayed
home. Much of the criticism of Trende’s thesis is based on deliberately
misreading his policy prescriptions – but it’s also based on a simpler
failure to grasp the basic math behind his calculations. Like any
exercise in reading exit polls and census data, Trende’s assumptions
(which he lays out explicitly) can be critiqued by people who are
serious about understanding the issue; there are no definitive answers
in this area other than final vote counts. But the vehemence directed at
Trende’s number-crunching suggests a Democratic establishment that
fears honest debate intruding in its narrative of an inevitable,
permanent Democratic majority built on a permanently racially polarized
electorate. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. The Debasing of Marriage
Up
front I’ll tell you that I am opposed to homosexual marriage. I am
opposed for a wide variety of reasons beginning with my belief that
Lawrence v. Texas was a travesty. Be that as it may, I have to agree
with many homosexual marriage supporters that it is heterosexuals who
have succeeded in debasing marriage and we shouldn’t be surprised when
the course we’ve charted for marriage over the past seventy or so years
arrives at its logical conclusion in which marriage is treated as the
punch line in a gay sex joke.
In
Western Civilization, marriage has traditionally indissoluble. The
break with that tradition occurred when Henry VIII made himself head of
his own church so he could procure divorces when the headsman was
indisposed. Even so, in the context of dynastic politics he had a point.
Unfortunately, societies tend to be run by elites who are often
dismissive of norms of behavior and
the masses which emulate them (let’s face it, a married man getting
fellated by a woman thirty years his junior was totally déclassé until
Bill Clinton arrived on the scene. Video taping your sexual antics was
considered bad form until Paris Hilton turned hers into fame). . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4. House Conservatives Beware the New Whipping Strategy
Over the past few years, the number of conservatives in the House has grown exponentially. Well, at least to the extent that you can’t count them on your fingers. Unfortunately, House conservatives are about to become a victim of their own successes if they fail to change course.
In a sane world, Republicans would have more leverage than the Democrats over the legislative process. They have full control over the House and a filibuster-strength minority in the Senate. Consequently,
they have the ability to block bad legislation from passing the Senate,
while jamming the Democrats with good bills from the House. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
5. There Are No Indispensable Men
There are no indispensable men, but go to Washington and everyone treats everyone else as indispensable.
Mitch
McConnell and John Boehner have been in the United States Congress
since 1985. In that time the national debt has grown from
$1,823,103,000,000.00 to $16,066,241,407,385.89. In that time the GOP
went from being the part of small government to the party of slightly
smaller than the Democrats. No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, TARP,
the General Motors bailout, and so much more happened on their watch.
But
they remain and voters who vote party and not person keep supporting
them. But they are not indispensable. No man is indispensable. The
longer one stays in Washington though, the more desperate one becomes to
stay in Washington. They collaborate in a system of arrangements
whereby they get more power and more influence. Their staff leaves to K
Street creating a feedback loop. They and their Democratic counterparts
reward friends and steer policy not toward ideas and ideology, but
toward power with themselves in the center of it.
No man is indispensable. Mike Enzi (R-WY) is right there with them.
Mike
Enzi is a fine Republican, but he is not putting points on the board
for conservatives. We need more like Ted Cruz and less like . . . well .
. . Mike Enzi. We need less rudderless Republicans who shuffle around
at the direction of their leadership and lobbyist friends. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
6. Pro-Abort Intimidation: YMCA Evicts Pro-Lifers In Texas
As
the abortion battle continues in Texas, a local YMCA chapter told
Students For Life Of America (SFLA) to leave the premises after
anti-lifers intimidated the assistant branch director to renege on their
agreement to use the center’s shower facilities. The
SFLA had embarked on a 3o-hour bus ride to Austin to rally in favor of
the pending Texas bill that will ban abortions twenty weeks into a
pregnancy. Pro-aborts
have also staged demonstrations against the new regulations, which
passed its first legislative hurdle in the Texas House. The Texas Senate expects to pass the bill soon. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
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