Back to Basics

Let’s be clear about something: the Democratic Left smells blood in the case of Rupert Murdoch and the English hacking scandal.

Why?

Because Murdoch and his American media entities – especially Fox News and the New York Post – have bedeviled the Left for years. These right-of-center news sources have gone into hard-left territory – TV news and the New York news market – and dominated not only in market share but also in setting the news agenda.

And they have made tons of dough – while the Left-leaning media are all losing money (declining ratings and readers and thus ad revenue) hand over fist in the recession.

So we are witnessing professional jealousy coupled with a brief moment of hope on the Left – hope that they can decapitate the leadership of the News Corporation. Indeed, if the Murdochs were no longer in charge of News Corporation, liberals would quickly permeate the entire organization, especially the politically vital Fox News Channel.

Fox News has become the base of the GOP, Tea Party and conservatism. Find me one right-of-center person in the USA who doesn’t look at it – at least a bit. Thus FNC is the rallying point for the Right; and the Left knows this. It drives them mad that CNN and MSNBC – both egregiously left-wing – have microscopic audiences and thus virtually no political clout whatsoever.

And the three broadcast networks – CBS, NBC and ABC – have declined in audience share, too, although they all remain left-of-center.

So the only avenue for Republican/Tea Party/conservative audiences to hear a non-leftist spin is talk radio – and Fox News. Period. That’s it.

No wonder the Left is salivating at Murdoch’s present troubles. If they take him out – and then get rid of Roger Ailes as the head of Fox News – and make no mistake about it: Roger is the man the Left really wants to get – then in their warped minds, they can again dominate the political agenda.

The “Fair and Balanced” slogan of Fox may not always be totally accurate; but it taps into something most news viewers have known for decades: prior to Fox, there was nothing fair or balanced about the so-called Mainstream Media. It was relentlessly liberal, unfair to conservatives, and warped to fit the left-wing political agenda that remains today way, way out of the American political mainstream.

So watch carefully in the next few days. If the FBI probe of News Corporation has legs – and if there is something there – then liberal Senators and Congressman are relentlessly going to savage Murdoch and Fox.

They see it as an opportunity to do what they have failed to do in the forum of public opinion and in most recent elections: win the hearts and minds of the American people.

They would prefer to rig the debate by depriving half of America of a voice for their views and opinions.

Since the Great Depression, we have not seen a political and societal situation as gloomy, pessimistic and angst-ridden as today.

All the polling and research show disturbing – and previously unheard-of – thoughts permeating the American public:

• More people today believe that the gap between the government and the governed is wider now than at any time since the American Revolution.

• 70% believe the US is on the “wrong track.”

• 44% believe we are back in a recession.

• A huge majority believe the 2007-2008 financial collapse was due to criminal behavior – either or on Wall Street and/or inside the federal government or as pollster Doug Schoen puts it, “a rigged game.” Yet no one has been prosecuted for it!

In sum, the American people are ripe for a Big Change in 2012.

If present conditions persist, how can the people possibly keep the same government in power?

Answer: they can’t. And won’t.

But then comes this question: what will happen? Who will emerge to bring about the change – the real – not cosmetic change – people will be demanding?

As notable pollster/campaign adviser Pat Caddell said yesterday, “We are in a pre-revolutionary moment.”

The “revolution” he is talking about is the “governed” are about to blow against their government – and the entire so-called establishment, i.e. the media establishment, the financial establishment including Wall Street and, of course, the DC-Beltway political establishment of both parties.

Here is a fascinating look at the present divide between the people and the establishment: pollster Scott Rasmussen on June 1 of this year asked people to agree or to disagree with this statement:

“The gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and politicians who want to rule over them is now as big as the gap between the American colonies and England during the 18th Century.”

65% of likely GOP voters agree with this statement; 55% of independent voters agree with it. Overall 45% of all likely voters agree with it.

But the Political Class?

Zero per cent agree with it!

That says it all, doesn’t it?

This gap today between this Political Class and the grass roots Americans is illustrated today by the foisting on us of Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor who worked for and basically endorsed Obama.

Why do we want this man? Who wants him?

We do not want him – the GOP Political Class wants him.

So we now have two Mormons who believe in nationally mandated health care (RomneyCare and Huntsman privately praised ObamaCare aboard Air Force One to Obama), and who also believe in man-made global warming. And the Tea Party Movement can’t stand either man.

How can either possibly represent the conservative movement and the Republican Party?

Yet our establishment is lining up behind these two.

No wonder the real race for 2012 is to see who is the outsider who comes along and takes on the Establishment and the Political Class.

That person will likely be our next President of the United States.

Now that the preliminary fights – last week’s relatively-trivial struggle over a mere $38 billion in cuts – are over, we are about to proceed to the most epic and important national debate of our lifetime.

This is the imminent vote in Congress to raise the national debt ceiling. Without an affirmative vote by Congress and subsequent presidential signing, the federal government will no longer be able to borrow money by issuing debt (selling US Treasury bills) and will then soon be incapable of paying its bills, including interest payments to US bond-holders.

In effect, we will “go bust.”

Or, the United States of America – the greatest nation ever created – will have squandered all we have been given and spent ourselves into Third World status.

But there is indeed another option: we can use this upcoming debt ceiling vote to force the radical spending and tax changes that are necessary to set us back on a sane course.

Specifically, this means we must:

• Fix the negative long-term downward trend of Social Security;

• The same applies to Medicare;

• Medicaid is rife with rip-offs from nursing homes and doctors; this has to be totally overhauled;

• Pentagon spending, which gets a free pass from too many on the Right, needs an overhaul in its spending and contracting processes;

• The tax code needs a major revamp – to make it fairer and to capture more revenue;

All of these are major, wrenching, difficult, politically suicidal steps – and they will all have to be addressed simultaneously in order to garner the necessary votes to raise the debt ceiling.

As of now, the votes are not available to pass an increase in the debt ceiling. The 87 Tea Party freshmen in the House have told Speaker Boehner they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling.

The White House and the Treasury Department are secretly in a state of near-panic over the possibility that the debt ceiling will not be raised.

Thus we have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save this country.

And the Hand of God is involved: the Tea Party Movement, which arose over the debt, is now positioned in Congress to leverage this debt ceiling vote into a long-term plan to pay down the national debt.

In other words, the Tea Party Movement is going to force the two parties and the political Establishment inside the DC Beltway to undo decades of irresponsible federal spending.

The rhetoric will be epic. The anger real. The fear palpable. The demonizing of the Tea Partiers will be savage.

But, here is my prediction: by early summer, Obama and the Left and Boehner, McConnell and the Right will make the Grand Bargain: major changes in all of the above, embraced by both sides, and forced by the courage of outsiders from the Tea Party who brought fiscal sanity to the process.

America will once again admit its problems – and fix them. Thank God.

Donald Trump’s emergence as a possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate has to be compared to the last billionaire – Ross Perot – who burst onto the political scene in February 1992 on CNN’s Larry King Live and completely altered that race and, in effect, elected Bill Clinton over President George H. W. Bush.

There are a few similarities between Perot and Trump but many differences, too:

• As billionaires they are seen by the public as too rich to be corrupted by our dirty political culture;

• In a time of national economic distress, billionaires are seen as guys who know how to make money when none of us can; they know how to do all the things we cannot do – in sum, many people think billionaires are smarter than anyone else; this is ironic as most people think billionaires don’t pay their fare share of taxes – yet they still want the billionaire to be the savior;

• Ross Perot and Donald Trump do share several characteristics that come from being rich: they are both their own bosses and thus the normal political and media rules do not apply to them;

• They have enormous egos;

• They don’t listen to people very well;

• They can get on any show any time they want – something only a sitting president can do;

• Now, how are Perot and Trump different?

• Perot is a Naval Academy graduate and thus was always a straight-laced square person who wanted to focus his campaign not on himself but more on the debt status of the federal government.

• Perot’s true – and heretofore-unknown – reason for running in 1992 was to ruin George H.W. Bush’s chance of being re-elected as payback for Bush’s criminal behavior in covering-up the truth about the POWs left behind – alive – in Vietnam when the war ended. Bush was head of the CIA in 1976 – and has been dirty on the issue ever since. Perot was out to “get” him for this perfidy – and he did.

• But that was all about a serious public policy issue – not about the personal aggrandizement of himself;

• Donald Trump is all about himself – period!

• Everything he touches has to have his name splashed all across it. (Will it become The Trump White House if he wins?)

• Trump’s business and personal behavior over the years is not on the same level as Perot’s pioneering career in computers. Gambling casinos and three marriages are not going to fit with the still-powerful Religious Right – even if much of what (now) says on China and OPEC and Obama strikes a responsive chord.

Conclusion: While our country is floundering in a weak economy, the allure of the billionaire savior can be intoxicating.

But American does not need a savior! We are America’s saviors!!!

Do not fall for the (momentary) allure of the easy fix – the idea that one rich man knows better than we do.

No, as we see with the Tea Party Movement, we, the American people, are pushing, clawing, scratching and fighting to change our country’s economic future.

We are witnessing today – for the first time in American history – a roll-back of government at the state level and, perhaps even at the federal level, as well.

This concept – limited and smaller government – has been the basic precept of American conservatism for decades. But it has never been enacted – even under conservatives. Ronald Reagan, our greatest conservative politician, as governor in California and as president did not shrink government; he only decreased the rate of increase.

Other so-called “conservatives,” like the two President George Bushes, grew government, increased the deficits and national debt, and made a mockery of the once-clear distinction between Republicans and Democrats.

But the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown and subsequent recession/depression have now rippled all the way through our economy. First it was the still-ongoing housing crash followed by massive private sector lay-offs. That has lead to a precipitous drop in government tax revenues and an equal increase in new government pay-outs for unemployment benefits.

The result of this is near or virtual bankruptcy in many states – New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois and the other upper mid-west states. But because of state constitutional mandates requiring an annual balanced budget, governors from both political parties are faced with the same problem: how to either cut government costs or raise revenues. Only Illinois has implemented a massive personal income tax increase; all the other states are instead trying to cut costs, realizing that tax increases during a recession will drive businesses out of their states.

And that leads us to Wisconsin. There the Republican governor and state legislature has identified the long-term culprit as spiraling public labor costs, including not just salaries but especially health care contributions and retirement, as the area that must be brought back into balance with private sector workers.

The questions are simple: why should public employees not pay more for their share of health costs and retirement? If private sector workers have to pay their fare share, shouldn’t government workers, too?

This is not an assault on labor – although Big Labor and the Obama White House are trying to make it such. No, this is the pendulum swinging back to the economic and political center. Government workers are not being fired or laid off; that is the last option governors are taking. Instead, the idea is to reduce costs and try to save these jobs.

But there has developed a new – and arrogant – mentality in our nation over the past fifty years: government workers – town, county, state and federal – have grown to expect special privileges and extra benefits as part of the job. Thus, in many ways, these jobs are cushier and more secure than their private sector counter-parts. These jobs have become a special, protected, superior class of workers.

This is a far cry from fifty or more years ago when a “government job” was a lesser job than a private sector job.

The just-completed C-PAC annual meeting has – again – shown us that we on the Right do not have a front-runner or even a plausible candidate to unite us as we head into the crucial 2012 presidential and congressional elections.

In fact, C-PAC demonstrated that the organized Right, which sold its soul to a faux conservative in 2000, G.W. Bush, and then supported him and an irresponsible GOP-run Congress as they partnered to bankrupt our public fisc and squander our moral and military advantage for six years, is now devoid of a true conservative who understands and believes in the principles that separate us from the squishy middle and the out-of-touch Left.

First, this C-PAC event shamed itself by inviting Donald Trump to speak. Who can take him seriously in a political context? He is not, nor has he ever been a conservative. How quickly C-PAC organizers apparently forget Trump’s support of and praise for both Bill and Hillary Clinton in all their campaigns – as well as the scores of other liberal Democrats he has financed in states where he buys their influence for his business interests. How quickly they also forget Trump’s sordid marital and sexual history.

This is someone to be listened to? Especially as he trashes the one candidate, Ron Paul, who has maintained steady and consistent principles for over thirty years?

Last Sunday we celebrated the 100th birthday of America’s greatest conservative leader, Ronald Reagan. But by Thursday we were listening to Donald Trump comment on public issues?

Do we need any more proof how far off the rails the Right has gone?

As for the other possible GOP 2012 presidential candidates, it is clear none of them connected in any emotional way with the majority of conservative activists sitting in that hotel ball room over the weekend and who came to DC desperate to find a new leader.

Instead, the candidates demonstrated their ability to pander – and their scripted anti-Obama rhetoric – but noneof them – other than Ron Paul – touched the souls of the thousands of activists who are the Army of the Right.

A note about Ron Paul: he is indeed a libertarian more than a traditional conservative. But the key to Ron is his constant adherence to his principles no matter how many times he has been defeated or his ideas rejected. Ron is the Energizer Bunny of the libertarian right – and we on the Right all respect that perseverance, as we have all been rejected, humiliated and treated with contempt over time by the smug leftists who think they are smarter than everyone else.

It was poor form of Trump to come to C-PAC and dump on Ron Paul. And it shows that Trump did not know his audience- or did not care about their respect for Congressman Paul.

What is clear is that we do not have a candidate – yet – who can unite the Right and win a majority of the crucial independent voters. Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee and Barbour? It doesn’t look like any of them can do it. Nor can the others we have seen.

Lost in the ‘round-the-clock coverage of the Egyptian Revolution was the stunning announcement last week that the House GOP leadership was going to cut $32 Billion from the current budget.

Really?

This same GOP leadership – Boehner, Cantor and Ryan – had campaigned last year on the pledge of cutting $100 Billion.

Then, after the election, they scaled that back to a revised pledge to cut $50 billion.

And now they have – again – scaled that back to $32 billion in non-security discretionary spending. And this is in a budget projected to run a $1.5 trillion.

All they can find is $32 billion?

And there are no specifics about these cuts. (They promise to reveal them this week.)

At the other side of the conservative wing sits the Tea Party movement – and their demand to cut much, much more. Senator Jim Demint of South Carolina has called for $250 billion per year – for 10 years – for a total of $2.5 trillion.

Quite a gap, eh?

And there is certain to be quite an explosion on the Right when this pathetically-meager $32 billion dollar cut – some will call it a “timid sell-out” – is made public.

Here’s the rub: cutting government spending is very, very difficult. There are huge political and economic costs. Who is angered by these cuts? Which constituencies? Which lobbyists? How many government layoffs are created in an already tight job market?

Public opinion polls show the American people support generalizations such as “we need to reduce government spending,” but when specific cuts are proposed, the majority is against each one, especially entitlement cuts and reforms (which, along with the Pentagon, is where 85% of federal spending is.)

Conclusion: there is about to be a major clash between the GOP Establishment and the Tea Party over government spending cuts. And this will be a world-class battle – and will spread into the 2012 GOP Presidential primaries.

This will get ugly – with the presidential candidates pulled to the right and thus opposing the party’s DC establishment.

What a mess.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue the President has pushed too hard in public against our ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. It is one thing to privately have an American envoy urge Mubarak to resign; it is altogether a different matter to do it in public as Obama and Hillary have done. They have embarrassed Mubarak – and thus earned disdain from our long-time ally.

The result is our other Mid-East allies are aghast and furious. Jordan, Iraq, the Saudis, even the Israelis, and several others are openly questioning just how loyal a friend President Obama really is? They correctly see a headline-happy publicity hound – Barack Obama – who cares only about one man: Barack Obama.

There will be consequences – perhaps dire – to Obama’s readiness to dispatch an ally.

1) President Hosni Mubarak is a goner. The only question is: does he leave on a private jet to enjoy the American aid money he undoubtedly squirreled away overseas for his private use – or does he try to hang on and thus leave in a body bag?

2) Who and what comes next? Do the radicals – i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood – use this opportunity to seize power in the next national elections? (And, if they do gain power, do they then cancel/rig future elections so as to keep power?)

3) Will Jimmy Carter and other like-minded types come into Egypt to certify that the next national elections are “honest”?

4) Does the post-Mubarak Egyptian government honor the 30-year old Camp David Accords and thus continue to collect billions in aid from DC?

5) Does this anti-government fervor spread to Jordan? To Saudi Arabia? To Syria? To Yemen? And what of the ongoing revolt in Tunisia?

6) What does this portend for Israel? Are they militarily prepared to once again be surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors – with the militant Tehran regime fueling the fires of anti-Israel sentiment?

7) In DC, does the Obama Administration have a handle of the Arab and Muslim world possibly crumbling in front of our eyes? Does Obama have a clear-cut American strategy? Does anyone believe that Obama and Hillary really know what they are doing in foreign policy?

8 ) Can this anti-establishment fervor in the Arab world possibly topple the nuclear-armed government of Pakistan? Or is this a country-by-country phenomenon?

9) What does this ongoing ferment do to the terrorist element inside Islam? Does it embolden them? Does it unleash more acts of terror?

10) Or is this primarily a middle class revolt over horrid economic conditions and poverty for so many Arab youth?

11) What can new Egyptian leaders do to alleviate the rotten economic conditions in the world’s biggest Arab nation? Yes, they can eliminate official corruption which is tolerated when the economy works reasonably well but is blamed when the economy falters. But what to do to get millions of Egyptians back to work? (What a task facing the next government!)

12) A year from now what will the Arab world look like? More – or less – peaceful? Are we about to see a more secular, economics-driven Arab ruling mentality? Or are we going to see them retreat from modernity into Islamic fundamentalism, which doesn’t pay the bills but surely causes a lot of trouble?

Knee-jerk reaction–led by the outrageously political statement by the sheriff of Pima County blaming this shooting on the political dialogue in our country—has been to somehow conflagrate the traditionally anti-Big Government philosophy of the talk radio community and the Tea Party Movement into being co-conspirators in this heinous crime.

We didn’t hear the same left-wing nonsense when another mentally deranged nutcase–John Hinckley—tried to kill President Reagan.

Was that crime because of all the liberal, anti-Reagan demonstrations over the Reagan budget cuts and defense build-up?

No, of course not.

John Hinckley, like Jared Loughner, was sick. Period. And his sickness was not anyone else’s fault. (Except perhaps triggered by the use of illegal drugs that can release/cause/contribute to a range of mental afflictions including paranoia, schizophrenia and anti-social disorders. But the Left won’t want to talk about their glorification of pot, LSD and other illegal drugs in movies and Hollywood etc…)

We cannot use logic, reason and rational thinking to analyze the actions of one crazed, mentally unstable person.

The alleged Tucson killer, Loughner, was–by all reports–off his rocker for the past several years. Reading his posted MySpace comments shows a delusional, ill-educated, ignorant, sick man. Associates and college classmates now say they knew years ago he was crazy. But what does that have to do with talk radio? Or the Tea Party?

No, this is the Left seizing this disaster to go after the Right–the very week they saw their Pelosi-led control of the House and the Congressional agenda switch to the GOP-including the talk radio community which is strongly against bigger government and gun control.

Shame on them!

No one in the Tea Party Movement or on talk radio advocates violence. Instead, they are leading the difficult campaign to shrink government. Period.

The so-called mainstream media who participate in this blame-the-right campaign are a disgrace. But those who present all sides fairly are to be congratulated.

Let us pray for the Congresswoman and her family and for the other wounded survivors and the families of the other deceased victims.

And let us pray for our country to see this for what it was: the actions of one crazed mentally-ill young man.

Period.

• By the end of the year, the unemployment rate will still be unacceptably too high – in the 8 – 8.5% range. And that will turn the country even more sour about the economy, the future and the 2012 elections.

• Articles will appear asking this question: has any incumbent president ever been re-elected with unemployment north of 7% or 8%?

• While President Obama will not have a Democratic Party challenger, he will be viewed as beatable in November 2012. The Upper Mid-West – from Ohio to Minnesota – all states he won in 2008 – will now be against him and his Electoral College math will be difficult.

• Both parties are going to be viewed negatively by the end of 2011 precisely because the economy continues to flounder.

• GOP control of the House will cause a split inside the Republicans between Tea Party conservatives who want to address the National Debt and regular Republicans who want to cut more taxes to stimulate the economy.

• Sarah Palin will continue to dominate the talk of the GOP race for the presidential nomination. She will continue to prevent any other new “star” to emerge from the pack.

• By the end of 2011 no Republican will have emerged as the favorite for the GOP presidential nomination. Sarah Palin will still the most talked-about Republican candidate. She will have catchy one-liners at the TV debates which begin in June. There will be eight white guys – and Palin – up on the stage – and she will dominate the news of these debates.

• Instead, there will – again – be a flavor du jour – a new, hot, favorite candidate, each of whom lasts for a week or two only to fade and be replaced by the next faddish wave.

• A Big Fight will be over the extension of the Debt Ceiling. This has to be voted on by the House and Senate. The establishment is already saying to the new Tea Party elected conservatives, “You have to vote to extend the debt ceiling!” And these Tea Party-backed new Senators and Congressmen are replying, “I did NOT come here to run up more debt!!!” So look out for an explosion over this by spring.

• Cathleen Parker doesn’t make it to March 1 on CNN’s Parker/Spitzer. And the show itself – so dreadful you cannot watch it – doesn’t last past May 1. And if it does last longer it is only because everything on that network is unwatchable.

• The Big Scandal – written about in this space a few years ago – is still simmering. This is a scandal bigger than Watergate. It envelopes both major political parties. There will be progress in 2011 in blowing this open. And if it does blow, it will severely alter the 2012 presidential race.