From the diaries. Two years ago, I was a regular citizen, a physician serving the people of my community, and raising my family in Northern Michigan. Suddenly, I found myself answering the call to become a citizen-legislator. It occurred at a time when many of us recognized how seriously at risk our country was after the liberals had taken control of all three branches of government after the November ‘08 election. Under the new administration, this nation was flooded with czars, executive orders, regulations, and then there was the Stimulus package. I could no longer stand-by and watch our children’s future be mortgaged. So, I sought and won the Republican primary and then went on to be chosen by the people of MI-01 to represent them in Congress. Many others across the nation heeded the same call. MI-01 sent me to Washington, entrusted with the mission of stopping out-of-control spending, stopping Congress from passing laws against the peoples’ will, stopping the over-regulation of our small businesses and stopping the intrusion of government into our personal lives. In other words, reform Washington. I’ve been in DC a little over a year and a half and I must tell you it has been an enormous challenge. While many of us thought we could undo the damage overnight, the reality is starker. The same goals were there, but without control of the Senate and presidency, we’ve had to use stopgap measures instead of immediately restoring the principles of our Founding Fathers and the Constitution. The presidency of Barack Obama has brought this country further economic hardship and massive debt that poses an incredible risk to the overall economy. The Democrats promised job creation, but we’ve had failure after failure of Stimulus-funded companies. The enormous debt taken on by the U.S. government currently works out to over $48,000 for every man, woman and child in America. Despite our efforts to stop the out-of-control spending and to initiate reforms, we’ve been blocked at almost every turn. Currently the new healthcare law is before the Supreme Court. I, as many others, hope and pray it is overturned – not only is it unconstitutional, it was passed against the peoples’ will. We can reform healthcare with a patient centered system, tort reform and allowing portability of health insurance across state lines. The current administration is regulating America to death. Small business owners are defeated even before they can get started. They can’t afford the costs of trying to comply with government regulations, and they can’t afford to gamble on uncertainty when it comes to what to expect from the government. For businesses that have managed to survive the Obama economy, they can’t afford to hire new employees. Businesses cannot stay solvent when weighted down by government regulations. On May 1st, I launched my “100 in 100” tour. I am visiting 100 small businesses in a 100 days across Michigan’s First District in order to speak directly to our entrepreneurs – we must hear their concerns and address them in Washington. Our message to Washington hasn’t changed, neither have our goals. In fact, the need is greater than ever to take a stand. This remains my pledge and vow to the people of MI-1; I will continue to work to restore and defend the American Dream as it was meant to be, one where all have the opportunity for achievement. Not one dependent on government, but on their own self-reliant and capable selves. I will continue to work to end the political sense of entitlement in Washington that has brought weakness to America, not strength. When we restore our core principles, our sense of optimism and our “can do” spirit will return. We will have growing employment numbers, not growing unemployment numbers. Once businesses are free to grow and hire, MI-01 will once again be master of her own destiny. This November, we can do this. We can do this with your support and belief in America. To find out more about my campaign or to donate please visit Benishek2012.com Thank you, Rep. Dr. Dan Benishek
Obamunistas are saying that Obama is cool, and Romney is not. But cool to whom? Cool is in the eye of the beholder. I have to admit that if you are an aging hippie who never grew up, still think that the counterculture of the 1960s was the highwater mark of American civilization, reject America’s capitalist economic system as inherently unfair and uncool in the grubby pursuit of profit, see America’s historic world-leading prosperity as crass materialism causing global poverty, and regard America’s world dominating superpower military as the tool of global imperialism, you would see Obama as very cool for bringing your values into the White House. Ditto that if you are a mental infant throwback stuck in the last century who thinks global socialism and Che T-shirts are cool. But social and cultural conservatives would have just the opposite view. For them, Romney is the personal embodiment of their values. His personal life is right out of Ozzie and Harriett , Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best . The practical relevance of his Mormonism is that he is personally devoted to these values at his core. The offbeat theology of Mormonism is not at issue because he is not a Mormon theologian. Moreover, his professional life involves the core of entrepreneurial capitalism. It has been all about the finance of struggling smaller and mid-size companies so they can grow into successful larger, national companies, creating boomlets of real jobs in the real world. Romney’s whole business life has been about the capital in capitalism, which means he knows first hand how the system works, and how to fix it. This is why he should personally appeal to the Tea Party as well as to social conservatives. To the Left, therefore, Romney represents the personification of everything they hate (the precise word for today’s Left). A straight-laced Mormon who personally deeply believes and lives out traditional family values who is also personally a successful businessman, himself a card carrying member of the top 1%, from Wall Street to boot. That frankly makes this election even more high stakes. For Romney is personally carrying the flag for cultural conservatism like no other candidate could. If he wins, he completely shatters left-wing mythology and demonology regarding social conservatism, the top 1%, and Wall Street. This is why social conservatives and Tea Party conservatives should now come together and enthusiastically support Romney. Add to that the rejection that would involve of the personal embodiment of the Left, Mr. Cool himself, the product of a 1960s hippie and a self-avowed African communist. Indeed, for the Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi/MSNBC Left to rise to power, and then be repudiated by the voters, would be far more of a defeat for the Left, and victory for conservatism, than if the Left and Barack Obama had never won at all. For their ideas would then have been tried and failed and repudiated by the American people. How ironic it would be for the anti-Reagan, who did everything just the opposite of Reagan in power, to end just the opposite of Reagan. Instead of reelected in a historic landslide, with his political progeny going on to dominate American politics for nearly 30 years, a generation, he is defeated for re-election, possibly by a landslide, with his party quite possibly routed in Congress, and nationwide. That would quite possibly inaugurate another generation of Reagan conservatism, as the nation goes back to basics with the three Rs, Romney, Rubio and Ryan, restoring the American Dream, traditional American prosperity, and superpower peace through strength. Given the alternative, Obama’s re-election and the continued decline and fall of America into Hugo Chavez style socialism, or worse, in a second Obama term, this election is among the most critical and consequential in American history, rivaling 1860, 1932, and 1980, a true Paul Revere moment for the American people. A Historic Veep Pick In this context, Romney’s pick for his vice-presidential running mate will be highly revealing as to how he intends to govern, and highly consequential as to whether he can reconstitute the Reagan majority coalition. Romney needs to recognize that the country is so polarized and so ideologically divided that he cannot gain by trying to appeal to liberals and slice off a few votes from the Left. Liberals and the Left are going to vote for Obama in any event. Yes, Romney should try to appeal to votes in the middle, but he also needs to recognize the best kept secret of American politics — half of independents are independent not because they are in the middle, but because they are to the right of the Republicans. They are independent because they think the Republicans are too liberal, not because they think the Republicans are too conservative. That is why the Reagan coalition could dominate American politics for a generation. This is why Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is such a unique, historic opportunity for Republicans. He would enable Romney to bring together and maximize the Reagan coalition again of Republicans and independent conservatives because he is such an appealing conservative. But he brings an added ingredient that is so critical to the future of conservatism and the Republican Party — a powerful, grassroots appeal to the burgeoning Hispanic vote that is not committed to the ideological Left. The truth is that America’s Hispanic population is growing rapidly and will become a bigger and bigger proportion of the electorate in coming decades. Bottom line, there is no meaningful future for conservatives or Republicans without an appeal to the Hispanic vote. Rubio does so well in appealing both to Hispanics and conservatives, including social conservatives and Tea Party conservatives. He consequently presents the embodiment of opportunity to change the future course of American politics for decades. That change would start this year. In 2008, Obama took the Hispanic vote by 66 percent to 29 percent. But that vote is deeply alienated from Obama now after his miserable first term performance for Hispanics. They have suffered a depression under Obama, with unemployment well into double digits for his entire term. The disaffection is so broad that the latest data shows a net outflow of illegal immigrants from America, as real people vote with their feet to flee Obama’s economic oppression. Imagine the alienation that suggests among the Hispanic population of American citizens that remain here, for surely they are aware of the hardship suffered by their ethnic brethren, if not personally experiencing it themselves. They are already living the nightmare of the American Dream receding before their eyes like the Cheshire Cat. They are ripe and ready for change with the right appeal. Rubio on the ticket would draw much needed attention as well to Romney’s own Hispanic background. While Romney has the demeanor of a WASP, he in fact is not a Protestant, not an Anglo-Saxon, and actually not even white actually but a person of color in fact with his Hispanic heritage back to his family’s roots in Mexico. I predicted in this column the 2010 Tea Party landslide a year and a half before it happened! You can go look that up. I am now predicting a Romney-Rubio ticket would beat Obama by more than 10 points. That is based on the precedent of the Reagan-Carter 1980 race. Obama has been on a worse trajectory than Carter since 2009. Obama’s polls versus Romney are already much worse than Carter versus Reagan at this point in 1980. But I picked the actual 1980 election result state by state in the summer of 1980 when the polls had Reagan losing by high double digits. My prediction for this year’s race is no longer so far ahead of the curve already. Dick Morris is also predicting a 10 point win for Romney. But even with 41 percent of the vote going to Obama, which is the same final percentage that Carter got, and what I am predicting for this year, that would still be a sad result for America. That 40 percent of America would vote for such an openly far left extremist as Obama, after a whole term of experience with him, and be fooled by Obama’s cheap, transparently false and dishonest, Latin caudillo rhetoric, means we will still be a nation in trouble even after such a sweeping victory by the conservative party. You can take the percentage of the vote going to Obama as a dangerous infection of the body politic by lethal Marxist or at least neo-Marxist antibodies. Can America survive with such a high percentage of the voting public, albeit a distinct minority basically nuts? But I have to inject at this point an endorsement of Bret Stephens’ May 1 Wall Street Journal column on the Veep sweepstakes, “Anyone But Condi.” He addresses there the floated name of Condoleezza Rice for Romney’s VP. Stephens notes, “A mid-April CNN poll finds that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has unmatched name recognition and a favorable rating of 80% among GOP voters. She’s also the person Republicans would most like to see on the ticket.” But Stephens goes on to accurately describe the problem: Ms. Rice was a bad national security adviser and a bad secretary of state. She was on the wrong side of some of the administration’s biggest internal policy fights. She had a tendency to flip-flop when it came to the president’s core priorities and her political misjudgment more than once cost Mr. Bush dearly. She was a muddler of differences at the national security council. Her tenure at State was notable mainly for the degree to which the bureaucracy ran her, not the other way around. Among her blunders was the 2006 Iraq Study Commission which brought Jim Baker back to advocate yet another strategic surrender to the Left; the Bush Administration’s strange Jimmy Carter style cave-in to North Korea’s nuclear program (lifting key sanctions “in return for exactly nothing”); her mishandling of the notorious 16 words in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union, giving life to the narrative that Bush lied about the intelligence; the premature ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that allowed Hezbollah to declare victory; and opposition to a U.S. attack on the nuclear reactor North Korea had built in Syria, leaving Israel to do the job. In other words, she was at best a confused liberal academic behind the scenes that never got anything right, not a second coming of Jeane Kirkpatrick. She won’t bring any black votes to the ticket, and may alienate the base as the truth comes out enough to boot the whole election. Leave her in the pasture at Stanford. Is This Cool? While Romney is quite cool for conservatives, Obama’s gross mishandling of the anniversary of the killing of Bin Laden indicates his potential to tarnish his cool even to liberals by Election Day. Obama made the killing of Bin Laden all about Obama in a classless display of uncool, nerd-like misjudgment. We heard all about the great courage showed by Obama from the safety of Washington, D.C., where only his political bacon was at stake, while the killing of Bin Laden was actually due to the great courage showed by the Navy SEALs in their perfect execution of one of the most daring raids in world history, risking their very lives on the ground in Abbottabad, Pakistan. After rising politically by assailing Bush’s intelligence policies in the harshest possible terms as illegal war crimes, he was more than happy to take credit for the results of those policies, which led American intelligence to locate Bin Laden so he could be killed. Never even the slightest tip of the hat from Obama to Bush for his actually more central role in the ultimate killing of Bin Laden. Also in the May 1 Wall Street Journal , former Attorney General and federal judge Michael Mukasey notes Lincoln’s grace right after Robert E. Lee’s surrender taking no credit for himself, but noting the bravery of those who risked and lost their lives for their country, then focusing straight away on reconstruction and the civil rights of liberated blacks. He notes Eisenhower’s address once the success of the Normandy invasion was established. Again taking no credit for himself for the invasion he led, Eisenhower addressed the troops who had actually risked their lives instead, saying, “One week ago this morning there was established through your coordinated efforts our first foothold in northwestern Europe. High as was my preinvasion confidence in your courage, skill and effectiveness…your accomplishments…have exceeded my brightest hopes.” He mentioned himself only to personally congratulate the troops, saying, “I truly congratulate you upon a brilliantly successful beginning…. Liberty loving people everywhere would today like to join me in saying to you I am proud of you.” Mukasey noted as well George Bush’s address after the capture of Saddam Hussein, in which Bush again took no credit for himself, but attributed the victory to “the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers…. Their work continues and so do the risks.” Bush again only mentioned himself to personally congratulate the those who had actually demonstrated the courage, “Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.” Obama, in sharp contrast, explained the killing of Bin Laden to the nation like this: I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing of Bin Laden the top priority… even as I continued our broader effort….Then after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed…. I met repeatedly with my national security team….And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action…. Today at my direction…. Mukasey observed that it was hard to imagine Lincoln or Eisenhower taking credit for the heroic actions of others. Was Obama’s crass obtuseness in this event cool? It took a caller to a Washington radio station to cut to the full truth of the matter: Obama was responsible for the killing of Bin Laden the same way Richard Nixon was responsible for America landing on the moon.
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Mitt Romney, Conservative Cultural Icon
Who among us Is free of fungus? — Ogden Nash When attraction is physical, & the attitude is whimsical & the background is musical, The rationales become flimsical. — Shel Silverstein Who was the genius who thought it a good idea to prosecute former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards in open court? If he is elected, tell his next opponent he can count on my vote. If he is appointed, tell him to… tell him I will… er, be disappointed. Senator Edwards, we recall, was a contender in the Democrat primaries in 2004, itching to face off with incumbent George W. Bush. He had made millions as a particularly smarmy personal injury lawyer, who somehow convinced juries that the delivering obstetricians were responsible for children being born with cerebral palsy. His sleaziest escapade was a closing argument in which he claimed that the spirit of a dead child had appeared to him and implored him to seek justice on her behalf. His handsome hucksterism hoisted him to the United States Senate from North Carolina. The next inevitable step was the Presidency. Or maybe not. The public wasn’t buying it in enough volume and John Kerry became the nominee. Still, Edwards parlayed that adventure into a real piece of history, the kind of thing you can tell your grandchildren proudly about if they are still talking to you. He was chosen by Kerry as a running-mate and he managed to carry the mission off with some aplomb, even doing credibly in debate against one of the most knowledgeable men in political life, Dick Cheney. Fast forward to 2008. Edwards figured that vying for Veep last time gave him the inside track this time in the Presidential primary. His wife, Elizabeth, began a second bout with cancer and that recurrence did not bode well. Still, the two appeared together to announce they would soldier bravely on. The poor of America deserved no less. While Edwards was fleecing feckless medicos, he had noticed that there were Two Americas, and while he parked his ailing wife comfortably in the plush mansions of the first he headed quixotically over to polish the rails on the wrong side of the tracks. Later it came out that he was conducting an extramarital affair during the campaign, a dalliance which produced a daughter. As part of an elaborate scheme to cover his tracks (still on the wrong side of the inside track) he wound up collecting hush money from backers, which were reported as campaign donations and campaign expenditures. Now the government is trying him for this supposed malfeasance, with each day bringing more lurid and sordid sensationalism. Well, they are trying my patience too. I do not want to hear about the yucky details of messy liaisons. First of all, we are all human and let’s not pretend otherwise. Even in the best marriages, well-intentioned people can falter when away from home and under high pressure. If every book about promoting happy marriages advises people to minimize separate travel, that is because it is healthier not to subject oneself to temptation. When we create a campaign system that sentences participants to nonstop wandering from state to state and city to city, we should at least be aware that it is a tough test of character. Secondly, this situation is a very solemn sacrament on the altar of human matrimony. Many of us may be in this position at some point. A spouse is dying in a physically disintegrative way and the moral code asks us to honor their travail by practicing celibacy. God and society may be justified in calling us to this standard, but it takes a callous heart indeed to judge harshly one who falls from the pinnacle. In fact, there is no indication that Edwards was flippantly trolling for companionship in the Kennedyesque or Clintonian fashion — or Hardingesque, to be bipartisan. This was something that just happened and it was handled fairly discreetly. They had the courage to keep the child, too. I know all this is more wrong than right but this was far from a carnival of pure evil that needs to be shamed in the public square. Folks of my political persuasion like to define the preference for more freedom and less government as “conservative” although these views are liberating by definition, “conserving” a Constitution which is a radical departure from world history. Still, the instinct to conserve and to protect should apply to keeping private failings like these out of the spotlight. It may well be that he used donors’ money instead of his not because he was a cheapskate or a crook but because he could not spend large sums without accounting to his wife. A reasonable strategy for the government in this case would have been to make Edwards pay restitution and leave it at that. Instead we are all clucking like hens and gossiping like geese. Shame on us! As for me, yes I lied. It was I who wrote the doggerel above, not Ogden Nash or Shel Silverstein. But Nash did write this: One would be in less danger From the wiles of a stranger If one’s own kin and kith Were more fun to be with. And Silverstein did write this: Whosever room this is should be ashamed! His underwear is hanging on the lamp. His raincoat is there on the overstuffed chair… And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall. Whosever room this is should be ashamed! Donald or Robert or Willie or — Huh? You say it’s mine? Oh, dear, I knew it looked familiar!
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Private Edwards’ Court-Marital
Most characteristic of this preaching [of the Great Leap Forward] was its utopianism, the promise of a bright future just in the offing, “three years of suffering leading to a thousand years of happiness.” — Franz Schurmann writing in Ideology and Organization in Communist China Forward! Comrades, you can’t make it up. Can you say “campaign blunder”? Or is it a blunder? Is it deliberate? The socialist mind at work in campaign mode? The Obama campaign has picked a portion of one of the most infamous socialist slogans of 20 th century history to use as its own new campaign slogan. “Forward” is the new Obama slogan, Team Obama borrowing boldly from none other than the late Communist Party of China leader Chairman Mao. Mao’s slogan? “The Great Leap Forward.” Rather than describing this myself, let’s take a tour of various descriptions of this wonderful, Communist slogan. Here’s Wikipedia :
The sluggish economy favors a Republican presidential win come November, but some on the left argue that votes from a growing minority population will put President Obama over the top in the race for 270 electoral-college votes. Further, as the argument goes, these long-term demographic shifts could usher in a permanent left-of-center majority. Exhibit one in this argument is the recent Center for American Progress monograph, “The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election.” Authors Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin acknowledge that the Tea Party wave in the 2010 elections suggests that the American people reacted poorly to the explosion of spending, the loss of jobs, and the extremely weak recovery under Obama. But they argue nonetheless that the growing number of minority voters—and thus declining percentage of white voters—will allow Obama to win re-election. The study looks at national numbers, but also at the 50 state-by-state electoral-college contests. Teixeira and Halpin write, “The heart of the Obama coalition is the minority vote. In 2008, Obama received 80 percent support from communities of color, who made up 26 percent of all voters.” However, those numbers are changing: The 2010 minority share of the population was 36 percent, up more than five percentage points over 2000. That’s a rate of increase of around half a point a year over the decade. Applying that rate to the four years between 2008 and 2012 indicates that the minority share of voters should be about 28 percent in 2012, up from 26 percent in 2008. It’s true that some demographic changes are baked into the cake. And just as one cannot step twice into the same stream, candidates must be prepared to appeal to a new electorate every two, four, and six years. Republicans interested in winning elections have noticed that Hispanics have grown from 3.8 percent of voters in 1992, to 5.4 percent in 2000, and 7.4 percent in 2008. Of the 4 million children born in the United States last year, fully 25 percent were Hispanic. (Which means that 17 years from now, a quarter of newly eligible voters will be Hispanic.) But the demographics that truly matter are those that drive voting decisions, and, unlike race, many of them are mutable. Indeed they can be changed by politicians changing laws. One can, over time, recreate the electorate one faces each election year. Second Amendment Voters: Half of American households own guns. Almost 20 million Americans hunt. Since 1987, when Florida passed its “shall issue” concealed carry law, which bars the government from withholding carry permits from individuals who meet the requirements, fully 41 states have adopted similar rules. As a result, an estimated 7 million Americans now have concealed carry permits. Concealed carry laws have changed the electorate and created more voters—gun voters—who are increasingly sensitive of their Second Amendment rights. The left understood this process years ago. They passed restrictions on hunting that have driven a decline in the number of hunters with each generation. The NRA response has been to push for legislation making it easier for first time hunters and expanding hunting opportunities. Each team understands it is struggling to create an electorate in its image years and decades from now. Home-Schoolers: Twenty years ago home-schooling was illegal almost everywhere, but today it is legal and mainstream in all 50 states. Mike Farris, who helped organize this grassroots movement through the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Parental Rights Organization, estimates there are 2.5 million home-schooled children and 1.4 million home-schooling parents. Over the past 20 years, about 4 million parents have home-schooled some portion of their kids’ educations. Ten million voting adults were home-schooled at some point. Just like concealed carry, the home-schooling movement needed, first, legal recognition and protection and, second, peer approval to grow. The more Americans who know a friend or family member who has home-schooled, the more likely they are to do so as well. Charter Schoolers: The parents of the 10 percent of American students who attend private schools or charter schools know that the Democrat party is owned by the public-school teachers unions. No surprise then that one of President Obama’s first acts was to destroy the fledgling school-choice voucher system used by 3,000 students in Washington, D.C. While he sent his two daughters to the fancy and expensive ($32,000 a year) Sidwell Friends School, he crushed the law passed by Republicans that allowed low-income, predominantly black parents in the district to leave the failing—and expensive to taxpayers ($27,000 per year)—public schools. It is no coincidence, comrade, that states with Republican governors and legislators are, step by step, expanding parental choice. A handful of states have programs that allow businesses and individuals to receive tax credits for funding school-choice scholarships, which now benefit tens of thousands of students. Direct vouchers are available, though limited in terms of family eligibility, in 11 states. Last year, Indiana’s Mitch Daniels signed into law the nation’s largest voucher program, making around 55 percent of Hoosiers eligible. The number of vouchers is limited to 7,500 the first year, and 15,000 the second, but the limit is completely removed in year three. Also last year, Wisconsin increased the cap on its voucher program in Milwaukee and extended it to Racine. In March, the Arizona legislature approved the expansion of its education savings accounts—currently available to special-needs students—to those in failing public schools, children of U.S. military members, and gifted students. Meanwhile, the Louisiana House passed Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal establishing a voucher program for low- and middle-income families in underperforming public schools—fully 70 percent of all public schools. It is expected to pass the Senate, and might have done so already by the time you are reading this magazine. School choice changes the interests of parents, teachers, and, over time, young voters freed from state control. Every private-school teacher hired is one fewer public-school teacher forced to pay union dues and subject to political pressure every day in the same direction. Entrepreneurs and the Self-Employed: Obama and the Democrats have intensified their efforts to reduce the number of new small businesses and entrepreneurs. Yes, they demonize them in word. But their teeth show in their tax increases on “the rich,” which are deliberately targeted at the 30 million small businesses that pay not the corporate income tax, but the personal income tax: subchapter S corporations, partnerships, and the self-employed. In June 2007, there were 10 million self-employed Americans. That number was driven down to 8.6 million in July 2011. And things are getting worse. The tsunami of new regulations, Obamacare, and threatened tax hikes mean that Americans, per capita, are starting new businesses with employees just half as fast as they did 30 years ago. Looking at raw numbers: Americans started 563,324 businesses with employees in 1977 and only 403,765 in 2009. Fewer small businesses, fewer entrepreneurs…fewer Republicans. This is no accident, comrade. Government Workers: Rasmussen polling data show government workers are more likely to vote Democrat, and as their pay and length of tenure increase, so does that party loyalty. Not surprisingly, the stimulus packages passed by Obama and Reid used federal tax dollars to subsidize union-dues-paying, Democrat-voting, state and local government employees. Investors: Rasmussen polling also shows that Americans who have at least $5,000 invested in the stock market through, for instance, Individual Retirement Accounts or defined-benefit pension plans, are 18 percent more likely to vote Republican. Utah’s state senator Dan Liljenquist wrote and won passage of legislation that requires all state and local government employees hired after July 1, 2011, to have a defined-contribution plan. The state will contribute 10 percent of the employee’s income to a 401(k), or 12 percent for police and firemen, and there will therefore be no newly created unfunded liabilities. (And fewer newly created Democrats; personal savings breeds Republicans.) No surprise that Obama pushes higher taxes on saving and investment, and the confiscation of half your estate through the death tax. Ineligible and Dead Voters: One can also change the electorate by expanding it to include the departed: both those who have moved to other jurisdictions but whose names remain on voter lists, and those who have actually died and yet can cast ballots through the living, if no one is watching. Republicans have enacted voter ID laws in several states to limit opportunities for voter fraud, but Obama’s “Justice Department” is working hard to overturn them. Voter integrity efforts change the nature of the electorate in one direction; voter fraud moves it in the other. Following the ideologically embarrassing workers’ revolt against the East German paradise in 1953, Bertolt Brecht recommended that the Communists elect themselves a new people. In free societies, over time elected officials can in fact create an electorate more sympathetic to their views. The smart Republican and Democrat leaders have been doing this for years. The 2012 elections will determine not only the direction of America, but the very nature of its people.
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Demography, Destiny, and Delusion
