REPUBLICANS: TAKE THE ESA PLEDGE

Donald Trump and all GOP candidates should pledge to authorize education savings accounts.

The mainstream press and political pundits are bombarding us with a stream of warnings that Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates are driving minority voters away from the Republican Party by their “extreme” proposals and rhetoric. Whether or not one believes there’s any truth to this, Trump and every other Republican candidate can prove the dire predictions wrong with one simple act — sign a pledge that they support education savings accounts (“ESAs”) for all families and will work to pass legislation authorizing ESAs. No single policy proposal will do more to attract low-income black and Hispanic voters than treating the dreams and aspirations that those voters have for their children to be as important as those of families who can afford to move to the right zip code or pay private school tuition.

Mr. Trump and the other Republican presidential candidates should agree to sign the ESA pledge at the beginning of the CNN debate scheduled for September 16 at the Reagan Library. Nothing would be more fitting than for the leaders of the current Republican Party to honor the legacy of Ronald Reagan by signing this pledge in his library and before his wife, 32 years after the publication of A Nation at Risk. This Reagan initiative issued the alarm that “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” In its words, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war….” The authors of the report began with a restatement of a fundamental premise of the American Dream:

All, regardless of race or class or economic status, are entitled to a fair chance and the tools for developing their individual powers of mind and spirit to the utmost. This promise means that all children by virtue of their own efforts, competently guided, can hope to attain the mature and informed judgment needed to secure gainful employment, and to manage their own lives, thereby serving their own interests but also the progress of society itself.

Unfortunately, in 2015, we still do not give all children a fair chance since we only allow it to those with the economic means to segregate themselves in public schools in the right zip code, or in private schools. Mr. Trump and his fellow candidates would, by taking the ESA pledge, honor President Reagan’s beliefs, expressed at a White House briefing in January 1989, when he said:

Choice represents a return to some of our most basic notions about education. In particular, programs emphasizing choice reflect the simple truth that the keys to educational success are schools and teachers that teach, and parents who insist that their children learn.… And choice in education is the wave of the future because it represents a return to some of the most basic American values. Choice in education is no mere abstraction. Like its economic cousin, free enterprise, and its political cousin, democracy, it affords hope and opportunity.

Americans today still fundamentally support Reagan’s belief in the inherent right of parents to make the best choices for their children with as little interference from the government as possible.

For a more recent example of the power of parental choice, the Republican candidates should look to Nevada, where in January 2015 Republicans took joint control of the Nevada legislature and governor’s mansion for the first time since 1929. Less than six months later, Nevada Republicans passed a ground-breaking law allowing universal school choice for the first time in the history of the United States. The power of ESAs can be seen by the fact that those families whose children aren’t currently eligible for the program because their children attend private schools are clamoring for an amendment to include them. Nearly every poll shows that, regardless of political persuasion, economic class, or race, two of every three Americans support school choice. As Deborah Beck, a Democratic pollster put it, in announcing the results of her January 2015 poll showing 70% support for the concept:

“The poll clearly shows widespread support, among both political parties, for school choice. Any public official — or potential candidate for President — who ignores these numbers does so at their own peril.”

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and his fellow Republicans, by following the beliefs of President Reagan and authorizing ESAs, made it possible for families all over America to legitimately ask Mr. Trump and every political leader: If Nevada trusts its parents to make the right choice, why can’t my children have the same freedom and opportunity? As Assemblyman Ira Hansen said, when one of the bill’s opponents questioned whether parents are skilled in making the right choices for curriculum and instruction: “I think we need to have more confidence in our parents…”

Via: American Spectator

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[OPINION[ Finley: Democrats’ handout strategy is failing

Democrats hope to prevail in the 2016 elections by pounding the income gap. But at least one major group on the short end of that equation isn’t buying that the handout party has the right answers.

Blue collar white voters believe the Republican Party is better equipped to make the economic system more fair by an overwhelming margin, according to a new Washington Post poll.

In the survey of non-college educated whites, 50 percent had more faith in GOP policies, while 29 percent favored the Democratic strategy.

These are among the workers hit hardest by the economic shifts of the past quarter century, and in particular by the failed polices of the Obama administration.

They’ve seen good paying jobs in Appalachian coal mines become casualties of the president’s war on coal. They’ve lost solid, middle class work on the oil rigs of the Gulf to a president more obsessed with tomorrow’s temperatures than today’s families. And they’ve bid goodbye to Midwestern factory jobs while the president saddles employers with oppressive taxes and regulations.

They’re the autoworkers whose fathers punched in at $30 an hour, and they’re trying to get by on a $15 hourly wage. They’re the legion of middle class workers who once had employer-provided health insurance, but now have to pay for most of their medical costs themselves.

They should be ripe for the Democrats’ anti-corporate, people vs. the powerful message. But they aren’t buying. And that’s good news, not just for Republicans in the upcoming election cycle, but for the country in the long-term.

Mitt Romney, the failed GOP standard bearer in 2012, bemoaned the prospects for selling a message of smaller government when 47 percent of the population is receiving some form of government assistance.

But many of these blue collar whites are among the 47 percenters. They may be getting Obamacare subsidies, or unemployment benefits, or even food stamps.

And that’s not what they want. They’re looking for the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families. They want jobs, not another Big Government giveaway designed to replace the paychecks Democratic policies have killed.

They’ve lost faith — if they ever had any — in the government’s ability to solve their problems. And who can blame them?

Blue collar workers have lost ground under Obama’s wealth transfer schemes. His policies haven’t helped the poor and working class, and haven’t much hurt the rich. During the president’s tenure, the gaps between rich and poor have widened. All he’s done is explode the size of government and enrich the political class.

Democrats won’t win these working white voters with campaigns built on class resentment and Robin Hood promises, and they may not be able to convince other blue collar workers to buy into more of the same failed strategies.

Because this rather large and often neglected group of voters doesn’t want more government. They want more and better jobs. And so far, Democrats haven’t proved they can deliver.

nfinley@detroitnews.com

Via: Detroit News

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And Just Who are the Racists Again?

The Republican Party was founded to end slavery. The Democrat Party spent a century trying to maintain de facto, if not de jure, slavery

If an individual or a group was utterly consumed with concern about a race, and used race as the sole litmus test for evaluating anything, you’d say that such people were racists, wouldn’t you?

f a group was convinced that the only reason anyone could conceivably oppose Obama is the color of his skin, doesn’t that indicate an obsession with race?

If people are willing to ignore violence and bloodshed when one race perpetrates in against another, but only if the perpetrator of the violence is black, doesn’t that sort of indicates a racial preference that overwhelms rational thought.  That, too, sounds like the behavior and attitudes of a racist, wouldn’t you say?

The unfortunate election of Barack Obama has given the left yet another epithet to toss like a grenade into what they apparently consider “uncivil discourse”.  The phrase “we need to engage in more civil discourse” has, itself, become a leftist favorite to deflect any criticism of the president or any of his policies.  But as a bonus, the Obama presidency has provided the left with an opportunity to accuse those “guilty” of any disagreement, on any topic, by not only elected politicians but any citizen of the country, with being a racist.

Via: Canada Free Press

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How Crazies Are Destroying Your Party

This is what happens when the two parties ruling Washington lose touch with America and pander to their crazy-extreme bases: President Obama's competency and personality ratings are nose-diving, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll; barely a sliver of the public thinks highly of the Republican Party; and two-thirds of Americans want to replace their own member of Congress.  

Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who conducted the survey with Republican Bill McInturff, called this a "Howard Beale moment," a reference to the famous rant from the 1976 movie Network.

"We're mad as hell," Hart said, "and we're not going to take it anymore."

Privately, party strategists agree. On Obama, a Democratic operative who works with the White House emailed me to say: "It's his Titanic moment. He's hit the iceberg, but they keep acting like no water is coming into the ship."

A GOP operative who also requested anonymity said that Wednesday's hearing on Obamacare highlighted what's wrong with his party. "We looked like we were beating [up] the HHS secretary," he said of Kathleen Sebelius. "Why do we have to always overdo it?"

Like many other party regulars, these two operatives worry that hardheaded partisans are pushing both the GOP and Democratic Party away from the political center. The phenomena is playing out unevenly (the GOP is arguably more beholden to its base than the Democrats) and for a number of reasons, including hyper-redistricting, the democratization of political money and the polarization of the public itself.  

But with each self-inflicted Washington crisis, notions such as an independent presidential bid, the dissolution of one or both major parties, and the rise of new political organizations seem less outrageous. The thinking goes like this: If voters today are more empowered than ever via technology (consider the disruption of retail, entertainment, and media industries), how long will they wait before blowing up the two-party system?

Via: National Journal

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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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The GOP divide: A battle of Corleones

In trying to understand the Republican Party’s internal battles, it helps to think of Michael and Sonny.

On one side we have Sonny, the hotheaded, impulsive, shoot-now-take-names-later son of Don Corleone. On Capitol Hill, he personifies the tea party followers who would rather die on principle than live to win a later day.

On the other side, we have Michael, the cooler-headed son and intellectual strategist. On the Hill, Michael represents the so-called establishment legislators who understand the way forward but thus far have been reluctant to pull the trigger.

That’s a metaphor, for all those literalists out there who may feel compelled to issue fresh gun-control imperatives. It means to take necessary, if unpleasant, action. Before action, however, there should be a plan, which has been demonstrably missing in recent weeks. Had there been a strategic, long-view plan, rather than a series of tactical blunders, Republicans might now be basking in the realization of a dream: Obamacare is a hot mess.

Remember the “train wreck” that Republicans kept promising? Well, guess what. It’s happening. The train is wrecking. And yet, rather than popping open the champagne as the Obamacare Web site crashes in a glut of glitches, Michael and Sonny are having a staring contest.

Via: Washington Post

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[VIDEO] Obama: ‘Gun Control—We Had 80, 90% of the Country That Agreed With It’

(CNSNews.com) - Appearing on ABC News’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, President Barack Obama said he had 80 to 90 percent of the country agreeing with him in favor of gun control, but the he could not get gun-control legislation enacted because of a “faction of the Republican Party.”

Obama made the observation about the supermajority of Americans he believes favor “gun control” when Stephanopoulos asked him why the issues he had chosen to focus on at the beginning of his second term seem to have stalled.

“You put gun control at the top of the agenda, immigration reform, climate change--all of it's stalled or reversing,” said Stephanopoulos. “How do you answer the argument that beyond the deficit, this has been a lost year, and how do you save it?”

First, Obama said the Senate-passed immigration bill, which creates a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens, would win in the House if Speaker John Boehner brought it up for a vote.

Via: CNS News

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MSNBC President: 'This Channel Has Never Been the Voice of Obama. Ever.'

In an interview with the Huffington Post, MSNBC president Phil Griffin tries to push back against the notion that his channel has become a mouth-piece for President Barack Obama.

"This channel has never been the voice of Obama. Ever," Griffin tells Michael Calderone of the Huffington Post.  But, Calderone writes, "Griffin acknowledges that his hosts are more likely to agree with Obama on policy matters than with Republicans, but rejects comparisons to Fox News."

"People want to talk about Fox. Fox is the voice of the Republican Party," says Griffin to Calderone.

Griffin does, however, acknowledge to the left-leaningHuffington Post that many folks working at MSNBC have a "progressive sensibility."

"We hire smart people with a progressive sensibility. ... I tell them to go think for themselves. We don't have talking points," says Griffin.

The MSNBC president pledges to make sure Obama keeps "his campaign promises."

"We're going to hold Obama to his campaign promises," says Griffin. "And the fact is, there are many things that some of our hosts support him on. But basically, we have a standard, whether it's the war on terror or getting out of Afghanistan: Is he going to live up to his campaign promises?"

And Griffin compliments his employees for being "really smart" and not going "over the top" during the 2012 presidential campaign.

"What I really believe is we analyzed this election in a really smart way and we didn't go over the top,"Griffin tells Huffington Post. "We weren't just shilling for Obama. We were really smart. And people are responding to that now."

Via: Weekly Standard

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Biden Accuses Republicans Of “Buying Into Extremism”…

 Makes Middle Class Appeal In GOP-Voting Virginia Suburb

CHESTERFIELD, Va. — Vice President Joe Biden made a raw appeal to Virginia's middle class on Tuesday, blasting the GOP presidential ticket for pushing what he says is a blueprint for boosting middle-income taxes while giving trillions in tax breaks to the rich.

Biden said Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan represent a radical and obstructionist brand of conservatism that would sacrifice education and Medicare to help the wealthy.

"Look, folks, this is not your father's Republican Party," Biden said, portraying Romney as out of touch with ordinary people and Ryan as willing to wreck the nation's finances to protect the wealthy from tax increases.

Virginia Republicans countered that it's Obama's policies that will hurt economic growth and kill jobs.

"The president's proposed tax increases will not make the next four years any better than the last. They will only stifle growth and eliminate nearly 20,000 jobs in Virginia alone," said Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican Party in Virginia. Short argued that Romney's approach would lower tax rates for all and create 340,000 jobs in the state.

Appealing directly to the moderates who decide elections in Virginia, particularly in middle-class suburbs like Chesterfield, Biden evoked his former Senate colleague from the state.

"I would be dumbfounded if former Republican Sen. John Warner said anything like that," Biden told his audience of more than 500 people in a cramped tractor barn at a county fairground. "I would be dumbfounded. I worked with him for 30 years." Warner retired in 2009 after serving five terms. He was succeeded in office by Democrat Mark R. Warner.

Via:  The Huffington Post

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