Mike Huckabee Goes To Iowa

Mike Huckabee's recent trip to Iowa to campaign for gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has taken the mediasphere by great surprise. Cognisant of the fact that well-known politicians like Huckabee never simply "drop by" their (first in the nation primary) state without ulterior motives at heart, the Des Moines Register (nevertheless) says that "Huckabee shows no sign of running for President."

Daivd Kochel, a consultant for Vander Plaats's primary opponent, former Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is naturally far more cynical than the Register about events, even going so far as to say that Huckabee has hurt his chances in the 2012 Republican primaries by his recent foray into the Hawkeye state.

This analysis seems to be based on Huckabee raising money for the Iowa Family Policy Center, a seemingly normal activity for a Republican Presidential candidate, but an apparent no-no in Kochel's mind due to the fact that the Iowa Family Policy Center has refused to support Branstad which, in that case, makes Kochel seem like well......a sore loser.

Brown Paves Way For Rubio, Stutzman, and Lee

Thanks to the theatrics of Scott Brown's succesful Senate campaign, the doldrum days of early winter have passed by in a swirl of rapid-fire hysteria political hysteria as we Republicans-nay, we tea-partiers helped to install a new tenant in a Senate seat that has been missing from the GOP fold for an un-Godly period of nearly 60 years. However, as much as we enjoyed watching Mr. Brown of Massachusetts tramping across America's hallowed birthplace of political activism (happy 236th birthday Boston Tea Party!), erasing a double-digit deficit in a matter of mere weeks whilst his opponent took a vacation, of all things, we must confront the double-sided realities that his election has brought us.

Despite his opposition to the Obama administration's health-care "reform," which did much to endear him amongst conservatives, one must not that Brown is still a liberal Republican at heart. One sees this manifested in his recent vote in favor the Obama administration's "jobs" bill, yet another of the White House's never-ending series of efforts to save the ever-eroding
economy and which according to Brown will "help put people back to work." (wasn't the first 'stimulus' supposed to do that?). Whether or not Brown will be Ted Kennedy reborn in Republican form remains to be seen, but as we see in more than one Senate race across the country, it is highly unlikely that he will be joined in the Republican caucus next January by any more of his liberal compatriots.

In a race not unlike Brown's recent triumph former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio has overcome a more than 30 point deficit against 'moderate' Governor Charlie Crist. Crist, as one might remember, enthusiastically 'hugged' President Obama at an event held in Fort Myers on February 10, 2009 to promote the wonders of the President's first 'stimulus' bill. The fact that his embrace (no pun intended) of the President's effort to spend us into an economic recovery (with money we do not have) does not see to have not made a dent in Crist who claimed this week that there is "no way" he will lose to the upstart Rubio, while, according to Republican blogster, Redstate, he is laying off staff members at the same time.

Thanks, in part, to the inspiring efforts of Marco Rubio the traditional Republican states of Utah and Indiana will also be home to contested primary races this season. In Utah, incumbent Republican Senator Bob Bennett is now reaping the rewards he has sown for himself by his support for federal gay-'marriage' benefits and by his insistence that tax dollars be used to pay for abortions. Bennett is being challenged by State Senator (and former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito) Mike Lee, who is running on a platform of "restricting government to its proper size and scope," which, unlike Senator Bennett's view, do not involve using my proverbial hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize abortion purveyors.

Due to the retirement of Indiana Democratic Senator Evan Bayh, former Republican Senator Dan Coats has come running back to reclaim his old job. However, Indiana Republican will soon get to choose whether they want to re-instate Senator Coats, who, after retiring from the Senate for the first ran-not walked through the "revolving door" of politics and private life to take up a new job as a lobbyist. Nevertheless, for reasons quite obvious, not all Indianans are especially keen to be represented in Washington by a lobbyist (wonder why). State legislator Marlin Stutzman is running against Coats on a platform that includes two wonderfully novel ideas, that is, to say, of cutting taxes and spending, while also providing tax credits to homeschoolers (yee gawds) and other such persons not especially eager to have their children be subjected to public education.

Nevertheless, for the short-term (or at least until November) one must be content with Massachusetts moderate, Scott Brown, who, to be fair, ran a campaign that will always be remembered and who, as the "Brown for Prez" foolhardiness that occupied our attention for a few short weeks in January and early February told us, might have become......well what's the point on shoulda woulda coulda?

Lack of Confidence

"We will rebuild. We will recover, and the United States of America will emerge
stronger than before,"

----Presidential address before Cognress 2/24/09

When you realize that the "stimulus" bill added up to almost $800 billion dollars yet only contained $13 dollars a week for American families the whole "recovery" schtick that our President sputed last night rings a bit hollow to say the least.

Are You a Kennedy?

The gushing media has reported this week that Caroline Kennedy "wants" Hillary Clinton's old Senate seat, which, in keeping with modern demise of the American political system, seems to have become a mere commodity to be handed down from one wealthy family to another.

For what qualification does Caroline Kennedy deserve to be appointed as the newest Federal representative from New York? Apparently, as was shown with Mrs. Clinton, it does not matter if one is qualified to be Senator from the Empire State if there other extenuating circumstances involved.

According to the mayor of New York City, Caroline must be given the Senate seat because she "can do anything," and if one has read a single newspaper narrative over the last two weeks, one would know that since Caroline's uncle Bobby was a Senator, she is eminently qualified to be one herself.

The Constitution outlawed "titles of nobility" precisely to eliminate this type of situation, so that people in this country would be judged on their own achievements, not by their last name and famous relatives.

The fact that the Governor of New York, Daivd Paterson, is even considering Caroline Kennedy for the open Senate seat while passing over scores of more-qualified individuals, serves to show that he is incompetent to hold office and must be thrown out in 2010 by the voters of New York. Like Hillary Clinton before her, Caroline Kennedy has no experience in government whatsoever and we, the beleaguered people of New York do not deserve to have another unqualified Senator thrust upon us who requires on the job training.

If Caroline is indeed appointed to the Senate which, considering the incompetency of our Governor, is more than likely to happen, she will face a tremendous hurdle in two years when she must run for election, most probably against my own Congressman, The Honorable Peter King, who, as usual in New York politics, has been a lone voice of level-headedness, pointing out that Caroline has no "hereditary right to a senate seat from New York State" and will not be warmly received by voters tired of politicians using New York Senate seats solely for their own personal gain.

The Dream is Shattered

Happy Birthday Blago!!!

Like most of the media, ABC News is now pining for those winsome days of old when their responsibility to the public was nil and they could stand "starry-eyed" and "transfixed," admiring the great and majestic Obama alongside the rest of us.

Therefore, the "little anticipated" arrest of Governor Rod R. Blagojevich came as a great shock to the media who, as good as feigning shock as anyone, is mortified at how their modern-day "Camelot" has been tarnished with the unseemly arrest of someone so politically close to Barack Obama, the media's lord and saviour.

Governor Rod R. Blagojevich has a history of being investigated by the Feds starting in 2005 with the Illinois Tollway Oasis scandal, which was followed by the corrupt hiring practices investigation of 2006. Apparently, Blagojevich should have quit while he was ahead, for when one is under multiple investigations by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, laying off the corruption for a while is a highly advisable move to make.

Beyond the bad publicity taking the shine of the surface of his formerly squeaky clean media image, the impact "is far from certain," according to the Associated Press. If nothing else, it will throw him off message, derailing an agenda that had already been doomed by the re-election of Senator Saxby Chambliss in Georgia.

However, it is still not certain that any of Obama's advisers may not be involved in this scandal, which would not do much to help bring about the "change" that Obama so often proclaims.

More court documents are expected to follow shortly.

The Money Hole

As it stands right now, the great change "change" so often promised by our next president seems to be merely a continuation of the central principle of the Bush administration: if something doesn't work, the only thing to do is to throw billions of taxpayer dollars at it in hope that some of them might stick.

Announced in his weekly radio address on saturday morning, Obama's grand plan to rescue America from joblessness and economic decline is a massive "public works" bill. As could be expected, Obama did not give a price tag for this bill, but adorned it with the usual verbal superlatices such as "investing" and helping our children "compete." Obama did put a number on one aspect of the bill, claiming it will create "2.5 million jobs."

One wonders how lasting these jobs will be. For when the federal funding runs out, the people who are employed by this bill will again be out of work. The economy will not be resurrected simply because the federal employs people to repair highways and screw in brighter lightbulbs in school buildings for a few months.

America's economy was built on agriculture and manufacturing, not pot-hole fillers and lightbulb-changers. America's workers need real jobs with a steady paycheck, not glorified federal allowance money.

However, they are unlikely to get them with Obama's plan to increase taxes on employers and the upper-middle class--in other words, people who own companies and make investments. For in Obama's world, we do not emplyers and entrepeneurs to invest in our economy and start businesses when we can all instead be employed driving a dumptruck on the interstate for $5.00 dollars an hour filling potholes for Uncle Sam.

We will not here any talk from Obama about cutting the size of government and eliminating the public debt. For such actions would lead to people and companies being able to actually keep most of what they earn, allowing that money to be invested in further economic growth. Obama wants a society of dependants rather than a society of independents, a society of people who depend not on the fruits of their own labors, but rather on a little green check mailed to them every two weeks by a government printing machine, buried deep in the bowels of the ever-expanding federal bureaucracy.

Saxby Seals It

I like to think of the GOP as a family, firmly committed to taking care of its members, whether they be politicians, or your average ordinary constituent. For when one member of a family is in trouble--anyone of the other members can be next.

It was most heartening, then, to see Saxby Chambliss properly dispose of Democrat Jim Marton 58 percent to 42 percent in the Georgia Senate runoff on tuesday night, thus insuring a filibuster-worthy Republican minority in the Senate.

Much can be gleaned from this victory.

Besides proclaiming a clear simple message, instead of engaging in the usual trash-talking with his opponent that so many politicians often stoop down to, Saxby received enthusiastic campaign assistance from 2012 presidential frontrunner Mike Huckabee, plus the obligatory stumping form the temporarily re-formed McCain/Palin duo.

Contrast this with Jim Martin's campaign, which received little to no assistance from Democratic heavyweights, (paging Barack Obama!), even though we are told every day by the vainglorious odd couple of Pelosi and Reid that the Democrats really really want that supermajority.

Perhaps the Democrats did not send one of their stars to campaign in Georgia because they realize the backlash that would have occurred. After all, Democrats only get elected when the Republicans fail to do their job, not because voters wake up on election day and decide that they just gotta' have a donkey in the White House and in Congress.

The Republicans know this, of course, and after shedding some deadweight in the last two elections (Lincoln Chafee? Ted Stevens?) they are in the process of becoming the lean mean opposition that will be needed to insure a swift and painful death to the socialism that is soon to come from the White House.