Conservatives Need More Carrot, Not Just More Stick

Conservatives are frustrated: why doesn’t the Republican Party deliver better results for us? Part of the answer, of course, is that the Republican Party only controls so much of the government, but there remains a lot of resistance in GOP leadership to fighting for conservative priorities. Why?

Conservatives have tended to see this as a problem to be solved my making threats: We’ll primary you! We’ll stay home! Not One Cent! We’ll go third party! In terms of asserting the legitimate supremacy of the voters over their elected representatives, these are healthy impulses. But they can never be a complete solution, because all these ideas are rule by the stick, by fear. And anyone who knows anything about managing or motivating people knows that fear alone has limits.

I submit that, if we want small-government conservatives and social conservatives to have real influence in the Republican Party, we need to go beyond the stick and offer the carrot; go beyond punishment and offer rewards. We need to prove to the leadership of the party that if they do what we want them to do, they will be richly rewarded with the things they value – advancement, re-election, fundraising, a growing caucus. Until we can offer those things, we will always be frustrated by the limits of our influence.

Via: Red State

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SENTINEL STORY: MICHELLE, LIVING WITH KIDNEY FAILURE UNDER THE SHADOW OF OBAMACARE

Living With An Illness and the Hazard of Obamacare

For the past three years, Michelle Moore has been on a waiting list for a kidney transplant.  She undergoes dialysis on a regular basis, just to stay alive in the interim.  Waking up, she often wonders how she’ll feel that day.  Some days, she doesn’t feel as well as she’d like.  But she keeps on going, living her life, and waiting patiently.

Michelle Moore

But her patience is being tested by Obamacare.  She told me:

I have the option of hopefully not dying.  Think about the people who are in the middle of cancer treatment or those who need a heart transplant.  What about them?  Obamacare adds onto the stress they’re already having.

It’s frustrating and terrifying enough having an illness like Michelle’s.  Many Americans can identify with her, while some are blessed with near perfect health.  But illness is part of the human existence.  Accordingly, quality health care is important to every American.

Every one of us can agree that health care is important, but we greatly diverge on the question of how best to achieve that.

Many liberals think a government takeover of health care is the best solution – sadly, that’s why we’re living with Obamacare.  Conservatives know there are better solutions to health care reform, and Michelle knows firsthand why it matters.

Michelle expressed a great degree of dissatisfaction with Washington – with both political parties.  Washington politicians and bureaucrats have proven themselves woefully inadequate to fulfill their most fundamental constitutional duties, evinced by the nearly $17 trillion debt, so one has to wonder why we should trust them to run health care.

Via: Heritage Action

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Profs: Fox News viewers are ignorant, conservatives are terrorists

Students in college classrooms around the country are accustomed to hearing from their professors that conservative ideas are the cause of the country’s woes. But the three-week government shutdown incited some especially colorful commentary from liberal teachers.

Amy Rosemond, an ecology professor at the University of Georgia, called House Republicans “terrorists” who were holding the government hostage.

In an interview with Campus Reform, Rosemond expressed regret for using the word “terrorist,” but said her point was still valid.

While Rosemond’s comments came during a rally she organized outside of Georgia Republican Rep. Paul Broun’s office, not all liberal professors kept their views outside the classroom.

Pat Willerton, an associate professor of politics at the University of Arizona, told his class that Republicans had single-handedly caused the shutdown, and were only in control of the House of Representatives because they had used gerrymandering to rig the elections.

Willerton regularly launches tirades against Republicans before class begins, according to The College Fix.

“It’s maddening,” said one of his students, in a statement to The College Fix. “No one in the class challenges his ideas or questions what he has to say, which is what I find the most discouraging.”

The university disagreed with the student, and stood by its professor.

Via: Daily Caller

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PALIN TO IOWA

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will return to Iowa on November 9, returning to the state that holds the country's first-in-the-nation caucuses. These are dominated by social conservatives who Palin appeals to as strongly as she resonates with independent-minded fiscal conservatives.

Palin will be a speaker at a Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC) event that will honor Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who led the fight to defund Obamacare along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

"We are thrilled and honored that Gov. Palin has confirmed to address Iowa's top conservative activists, as we kick off the 2014 election cycle," FFC president Steve Scheffler said. "Without a doubt, her appearance will motivate activists to be involved in grassroots politics here in Iowa that will help turn the tide here in Iowa, by electing more family-friendly public officials at all levels."

As David Brody at the Christian Broadcasting Network noted, the appearance will underscore Palin's influence among conservatives, especially those in Iowa, regardless of whether she decides to run for president in 2016. If she does not, her endorsement will be the most coveted among the GOP presidential contenders. 

One of the reasons Palin has been called the prototypical "Teavaneglical" politician is because she fervently appeals to faith-based voters as much as she does to fiscally conservative voters. Her influence was proven during the 2012 cycle when she praised Rick Santorum in December in 2011 when Iowans seemed lukewarm about the field of Republican primary candidates. After Palin made her remarks on December 2 on Fox News's Hannity, Santorum, who was at four percent in the polls in Iowa--barely above Jon Huntsman, who was not even competing in the state--started getting momentum and eventually won the caucus a month later. Though Santorum had gone "all-in" in Iowa and planted his campaign exclusively in the state, voters were persuaded to consider his candidacy more seriously after Palin spoke kindly of him. 

Via: Breitbart

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Skewed! MSNBC President Wants ‘Investigation’ into Fox’s ‘Impossible’ Ratings

Maybe conservatives aren’t entirely alone in being unable to accept inconvenient realities reelected in surveys. According to a report in Media Bistro on Friday, MSNBC President Phil Griffin demanded an “investigation” be conducted into Fox News Channel’s “impossible” ratings increase over the last week. He did not specify which agency would conduct this investigation, but might we suggest the Federal Bureau of Embarrassing Statements?

“Monday we had a really good day in the key demographic, on the night that Fox News debuted their three shows, we either tied or beat them in those hours,” Griffin told a group of MSNBC employees at a briefing to preview the launch of a redesigned MSNBC.com.

“Tuesday – you guys should be doing some investigations – I have never seen it in all my years of cable, same overnight, same everything, and they doubled their ratings in a day? It is impossible,” Griffin continued inadvisably. “I have never seen it. They did election night numbers in the demo Tuesday.”

RELATED: Fox News Ratings Up Big in Second Night of New Primetime Lineup

Griffin is correct. After a lackluster debut on Monday night for Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File, her ratings increased in the key demographic by %116 percent to 635,000. “Kelly also saw a 34% increase in total viewers, rising to 2.768M,” Mediaite reported. “Fox News soundly beat its competition on CNN and MSNBC in both the 25-54 demo and total viewers.”

Impressive, yes. No one has yet, however, suggested that this ratings increase was… suspicious.

The Hollywood Reporter reached out to Nielsen for comment, but as of print time they had “not yet responded to Griffin’s remarks.”

Via: Mediaite.com

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Americans Are More Conservative Than They Have Been In Decades

James Stimson knows as much about public opinion as anyone in America. He has been tracking the nation’s policy preferences for more than 20 years using a “policy mood” index derived from responses to a wide variety of opinion surveys involving hundreds of specific policy questions on topics ranging from taxes and spending to environmental regulation to gun control.

The latest update of Stimson’s policy mood series suggests that the American public in 2012 was more conservative than at any point since 1952. (Actually, since mood in each year is estimated with some error, it seems safer to say that the current level of conservatism roughly equals the previous highs recorded in 1980 and 1952.) While the slight increase in conservatism from 2011 to 2012 is too small to be significant, it continues a marked trend that began as soon as Barack Obama moved into the White House.

Via: Washington Post

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Why Liberals Use Law for Control, While Conservatives Use Law for Protection

The Purpose of Law is to Prevent Injustice From Reigning – Bastiat

An end run is being done around the traditional American approach to legislation and change. The result is a kind of tyranny by unethical strategy, or as Friedreich Nietzsche described – a Will to Power. But one important point escapes the minds of the leftists who seem to believe all power is self-justifying. Once principle is tossed aside in a mad dash for power, all players, including leftists, are then at heightened risk for being crushed under the wheel of the abuse of power. A cursory gloss of the Nazi and Russian Revolutions proves this point.

Liberals pretend to inhabit a pure land of enlightenment and political genius which cannot be improved. Therefore, they have no patience for any who disagree with their positions because these represent not humbly held opinions, but transparent truths. And any who disagree with obvious facts do not deserve to be treated respectfully. For example, for daring to disagree with ObamaCare, an activist wished a horrible death upon conservative kids – (see CA dem to Sen. Ted Cruz aide: I hope your kids ‘die from debilitating, painful and incurable diseases’ after vote against Obamacare)

The main insight anyone needs to understand the difference between the left and right is their approach to law. Conservatives want fewer laws which exemplify principles which defend the rights of the average person so that they might be more productive and express as much liberty as possible. Liberal progressives, on the other hand, demand the law be used to create an equal society where each person can receive economic justice and equal status. Yet, much like the French Revolution, this liberal dream is destined to create a fiery end for all involved if not abandoned.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Conservatives float new plan to delay Obamacare by one year

House conservatives are coalescing around an alternative plan that would delay implementation of Obamacare by one year and use the money saved to restore the sequester-mandated spending cuts, in exchange for approving either a must-pass budget bill or legislation to raise the debt ceiling.

The concept was hatched by conservative House Republicans disappointed with a GOP leadership proposal that would send to theSenate a budget bill that funds the government beyond Sept. 30 but allows the Democratic chamber to approve that spending while simultaneously voting down an attached amendment stripping all funding for the Affordable Care Act. Conservative activists are pushing House Republicans to leverage a government shutdown as a means to defund Obamacare.

House conservatives are sympathetic to this strategy, which involves passing a budget that defunds Obamacare and attempts to pin the blame for the inevitable government shutdown on President Obama. But even these Republicans recognize the political risk of a government shutdown, and they are now trying to devise an alternative to the leadership proposal that would still cut Obamacare.

“My take is, a consensus is all beginning to build,” Rep. John Fleming, R-La., said Wednesday as he exited a closed-door meeting of the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative House Republicans. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., attended the meeting, but did not address RSC members, those present said.

Republican leaders cancelled a vote on their Obamacare proposal this week, acknowledging that they didn't have the votes needed to clear the House.

RSC meetings can be raucous and emotive, with caucus members occasionally venting their unhappiness with leadership and its various plans. But members exiting Wednesday’s conclave described the discussion as constructive, an attempt to “thread the needle” between GOP leaders’ desire to avoid a politically risky government shutdown and conservative demands that the upcoming fiscal negotiations be used to block implementation of Obamacare, which will accelerate in October.

Via: Washington Examiner

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The Right Medicine

Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, conservatives 

have their own plans for reforming health care

Conservatives have a wealth of policy ideas about reforming healthcare but have failed to unite around any specific policy proposal, according to multiple healthcare experts who rejected claims from Democrats that the GOP has no substantial alternatives to Obamacare and is seeking to do nothing but delay and obstruct.

Lanhee Chen, policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, voiced frustration with the GOP for failing to cohere around a single reform strategy.

“I feel very strongly that Republicans have to be able to articulate an alternative to Obamacare,” said Chen. “I don’t think it’s enough for us to say Obamacare stinks and we don’t like it. I think everybody gets that.”

Avik Roy, a healthcare expert at the Manhattan Institute, concurred that this has been a problem.

“It hasn’t been a policy priority for conservatives,” Roy said.

Several Republican legislators have taken on the challenge of introducing actual legislation since Obamacare has become the law.

Rep. Tom Price (Ga.) reintroduced his “Empowering Patients First Act” this year, while the Republican Study Committee will release its own legislation as Congress comes back from the August recess, although details have been kept tightly under wraps.

Both of these proposals begin by replacing Obamacare.

“It sets up an alternative, a positive alternative,” said Price. He touted his reform as the “most comprehensive” alternative to Obamacare.

Via: WFB

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OPINION: Why Boehner's Plan B Is Conservatives' Best Hope

After President Obama was re-elected on Nov. 6, Americans faced a reality on Nov. 7: Taxes are going up. The only question facing conservatives now is how much of that tax hike they can prevent while also preserving as much of the hard-fought spending cuts they won in 2011.

Here are the facts: If nothing happens by Jan. 1, taxes will automatically rise by about $4.6 trillion over 10 years. Every working American would be hit. However, thanks to the August 2011 debt-limit deal, spending is also set to be cut by $1.2 trillion. Conservatives often forget about this little piece of leverage.

Obama's top priority is to raise taxes as high as he possibly can. A $1.3 trillion tax hike was his latest offer. But undoing the $1.2 trillion spending cut in the debt-limit deal is also important to him. His latest offer not only rescinds the scheduled spending cut, but it also calls for $80 billion in new stimulus spending. Obama did also offer to cut Social Security by $120 billion over 10 years and make $800 billion more in other unspecified spending cuts, but he has flat out refused to entertain any serious entitlement reform proposals.

Boehner's last offer to Obama wasn't much better. It only raised taxes by $1 trillion and undid the $1.2 trillion spending cut from the debt-limit deal. Boehner did call for a new $1 trillion spending cut to replace the sequester, but no meaningful structural entitlement reforms were included.

Via: Washington Examiner

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