Should we be RINOs?

No! And it cannot be repeated enough.

The "smart money" says that the way for the Republicans to win elections is to appeal to a wider range of voters, including minorities, by abandoning the Ronald Reagan kinds of positions and supporting more of the kinds of positions that Democrats use to get elected. This sounds good on the surface, which is as far as many people go, when it comes to politics.
A corollary to this is that Republicans have to come up with alternatives to the Democrats' many "solutions," rather than simply be nay-sayers.
However plausible all this may seem, it goes directly counter to what has actually happened in politics in this generation. For example, Democrats studiously avoided presenting alternatives to what the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration were doing, and just lambasted them at every turn. That is how the Democrats replaced Republicans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Ronald Reagan won two elections in a landslide by being Ronald Reagan-- and, most important of all-- explaining to a broad electorate how what he advocated would be best for them and for the country. Newt Gingrich likewise led a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives by explaining how the Republican agenda would benefit a wide range of people.
Neither of them won by pretending to be Democrats. It is the mushy "moderates"-- the "kinder and gentler" Bush 41, Bob Dole and John McCain-- who lost disastrously, even in two cases to Democrats who were initially very little known, but who knew how to talk.

Republicans will win if their policies, including not putting the federal government in charge of every damned thing in sight, make more sense than Democrats' policies.

Given the problems the Democrats are creating, like huge deficits, we should resist Democrats wherever they plan to expand federal power and explain why those expansions are bad ideas.

And we should tell the McCains and the Lyndsey fucking Grahams of the world to STFU and STFD.

Doing "Good" Things

Liberals are never afraid of doing something. They're constantly in a huff to solve some problem that can't be solved without the fierce moral urgency of change -- or some such blather.

Has anybody ever stopped to ask a Liberal which of their previous somethings they would wish to go and undo? Of all the "good things" Liberals have done through the years isn't it amazing that none of those "good things" were mistakes? Are Liberals the only people in the world incapable of making mistakes or admitting them?

Read the rest of Sowell's article for more good things.

Competence

Shannon Love (who btw is a dude) notes a trend in Instapundit's links. In each of the situations Insty considers government has failed to do what it would demand of private enterprise. But the apologists for Liberal policies always argue that government will get the very next thing correct (while ignoring the previous failures):

Leftists like to argue that, by some magical mechanism, real-world politicians make better decisions, especially better economic decisions, than do private actors in the free market. They usually make this argument after either the free market corrects itself naturally or the government interferes. They then simply assert, without any possibility of empirical verification, that the magic government unicorns could have prevented the problem if only they had been given enough power to do as they wished.

An investor who demands more (and perhaps the impossible) out of a company is well within her rights to do so. She can withdraw her financial interest in the company and move along. Doing so rewards companies that do the right thing (typically this means just the bottom line) and punishes those that do not. Leftists have used the tactic of non-investment to pressures countries (e.g. South Africa) and companies (e.g. Nike) to change practices.

But government can revert to coercion to prevent one form of bad action. In doing so, government is almost always fighting the previous war. But notice what else government does. It prevents private citizens the option of influencing behavior through private action.

Query this: Shouldn't Liberal activists oppose government action in favor of private action because their own power is diminished by government action?

Tax Day

I very much like the suggestion of moving Tax Day closer to Election Day. However, I can see that incentives for politicians would blunt the effectiveness of such a move.

It was no secret that candidate Obama was dissembling madly when he claimed 95% of Americans would get a tax break. The need for the lie is the lack of appetite for higher taxes. Thus Congress has made no moves to actively increase taxes. Instead, they plan to allow taxes to increase when Bush's tax cuts expire.

Democrats were clever enough to pass tax cuts only if they expired after a national election. Thus, they will be given three years to obfuscate their role in increased taxes. And Republicans were idiotic enough to allow such obvious ploys.

Second, Democrats are disguising more and more of their taxes. The proposed increases in taxes on soda, beer, cell phones and all sorts of other things will be felt widely. But because the amount of each tax will be relatively insignificant tax payers are much less likely to vote their anger about increased taxes. This means that Democrats are more likely to get away continually increasing taxes and assuming more authority to themselves.

So, taxes are likely to increase. But not income taxes -- aside from allowing Bush's tax cuts to expire. So moving tax day wouldn't make as much difference as it should.

Matt Cooper Spinning

I'll publish the text of my comment to this risible conjecture here for posterity's sake:

The problem Mr. Cooper alleges for President Obama's economic policies is the problem President Bush encountered vis-a-vis terrorism. Because there were no large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil month after month the threat slipped further from people's minds. Somehow the MSM never credited Mr. Bush on that account.
However, the reasoning w/rt Obama's poll declines cannot hold. First, there has not been a month after month series of good economic news to encourage the notion that Obama's policies are working. The projections of several months ago have only gotten worse on unemployment and capacity utilization. That has happened in spite of the promises the Obama Administration made regarding the efficacy of their plans.
Additionally, the fiscal stimulus set upon by the Democrats has barely taken hold. There are no "shovel-ready" projects of import available due to bureaucratic holdups.
Therefore, the lack of even more negative news (e.g. systemic failure) has been generated by the monetary policies that the politically independent Fed has taken. Since Obama cannot claim those were his policies without admitting the politicization of the Fed, it seems highly dubious to credit Obama with their successes, such as they are.
What is interesting is that the JournoList would test this trial balloon for explaining Obama's dip in the polls when Occam's Razor suggests otherwise. But keep up the good fight. Pravda and Izvestia would be proud.

Betraying Israel

In February the Obama Administration pledged $900 million in aid for rebuilding the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. WND reported a Hamas spokesperson saying

"We are very happy with this decision," said.. Fawzi Barhoum, speaking by cell phone from Gaza. "In the first place, this money will go toward reconstructing efforts."

As if. Money is fungible. Any dollar Hamas doesn't have to spend placating their own people through give-aways is a dollar that will be diverted to weapons smuggling. And support of terrorist organizations like Hamas is illegal.

Well, it would be illegal if the Justice Department wasn't busy staffing a booth at a Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front's convention. Are you kidding me? Do they not know that the Islamic Society of North America

was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas-support prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which ended in the conviction of five former HLF officials on 108 counts.

in a previous Justice Department action? And are they not aware that Hamas and Hez b'Allah are funded by the mullocracy in Iran? And that the mullocracy is currently embroiled in a potential revolution? Hamas and Hez b'Allah have never been weaker than when their patron state is otherwise occupied. Why then would the United States government invite the Iranians for a 4th of July celebration?

President Barack Obama's administration said earlier this month it would invite Iran to US embassy barbecues for the national holiday for the first time since the two nations severed relations following the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
"We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran," Kelly said. "We tried many years of isolation, and we're pursuing a different path now."

Hell, the Iranian protesters think Obama will come to their side in a fight against oppression? Fat chance. He won't even defend our avowed allies. It is my strong belief that the multi-culti crowd -- including Obama -- is going to betray Israel.

Associated Press

The following quote from this article is untrue.

The grim assessment was the latest unwelcome surprise for the market since last month and further eroded hopes that the economy was starting to emerge from recession. Investors began driving stocks sharply higher in early March, encouraged by modest improvements in housing, manufacturing and even unemployment.

In fact, the unemployment numbers have gotten worse every month that Obama has been president. Here's the chart that the AP story's writer apparently couldn't find. Funny, but I found it with only one google search.

Let me be completely clear: The AP article is a lie. And the author of the article is a lying liar. And anybody who republishes the article is furthering that lie.

And just to take away the last refuge of the lying liar, there has not been a slowdown in the change in the unemployment rate either. The unemployment numbers got worse by 5, 4, 4 and 5 tenths of one point on a month to month basis. There is no "second derivative of unemployment" that can save the lying liar.

The numbers for housing and capacity utilization tell the same story.