In the current condition of our political landscape, we Republicans could say that we are in exile, captivity, or wandering in the wilderness. We hear things like “conservatism in exile” on the Sean Hannity Show and “refounding America” on the Glenn Beck Program. Witnessing this phenomenon in the news and also from the R.N.C. leadership harping on the need for a bigger tent, the question of who will lead the Republican Party in 2010 and 2012 haunts the airwaves.

I find this idea laughable. The Republican Party is not in need of a charismatic spokesman or master rhetorician. First, we need to rediscover the principles that separate our party from its opposition—call them progressives, the left, the Democrats, etc.—before a legitimate leader can even be identified. All the talk about who will become the next Reagan assumes that someone out there actually understands what Reagan did.

It has been said that it would be rather simple to just train a leader, if there were one, to reiterate the correct message. However, such a statement misses the point entirely. The message is clear because it has been conserved from Mount Sinai to Greece to Rome to London…and then finally to Philadelphia in the Constitutional Convention and boldly consolidated in the Declaration of Independence. As Russell Kirk taught us, the permanent things remain. In essence, these are the universal principles that make America unique and will give the Republican Party a great advantage. I am a conservative because I am conserving these permanent principles against the prevailing skepticism of our day, and I am a Republican because I believe in a Republican form of governance. (I hope you realize that we live in a republic and not a democracy. If you do not understand this, please stop reading now because you will be wasting your time.)

So, are we in exile? This is an interesting question, and the answer is simple: No. We are not in exile—we still live in a right-of-center country. We see this in the discontentment of Americans taking to the streets during the first nine months of the current administration. With Cap and Trade and the Health Care bills going to the Senate, we are witnessing the goals of the Progressive movement coming to fruition—the state control of the individual in every detail of his life. Please understand, this goal has been a well-calculated plan for over eighty years, and we (conservatives) must put a plan in place to return to the promised land of liberty, equality, natural rights, consent of the governed, religious freedom, private property, the rule of law, constitutionalism, self-government, and independence. These are the “ten plagues” that will destroy the Progressive movement and the ten principles that Matthew Spalding has so eloquently expressed in his book, “We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming our Future,” a must-read if you are interested in destroying this notion that we are in exile.

So, are we in captivity? This is not as simple of a question to answer because we are free to act on our liberty if we want to, but without the knowledge of the previous mentioned ideals, we are stuck in an Egypt of our own ignorance and on the way to wandering in a wasteland of statism. Our founders made a very bold statement in saying, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” As a political community we must indeed hold these truths, but those truths were only self-evident at that time due to the culture. They have been forgotten, and we need to teach these truths, and the principles upon which they stand, to each generation to prepare our heirs with the proper arguments and understanding to face the challenges of the day. These truths are not known by intuition, experience, or social experimentation, and they are not merely a result of what we like, but they are known through inference and education. As President Reagan noted, “We didn’t pass it on to our children in the blood stream.” We must learn to argue for these positions, stand on the shoulders of the giants of Western Civilization and realize that this is an ideological battle, age-long, and often agonizing.

So, are we wandering? Yes! We are indeed wandering in the wilderness trying to be everything to everyone. We have been trying to make our tent so big that the tent is collapsing. We are falling into the relativistic thinking of our opponents because we have been unwilling or unable to show how our principles, and the truths upon which they stand, are clear. Recently, the 2008 Republican Party Platform was taken down from the AZ GOP website. Naturally, you must be asking yourself, “Why?” Could it be a broken link, broken thinking, or maybe a broken party? I would suggest that it is broken thinking, and thankfully, it is back up at the GOP website. However, it is still very difficult to find—as if we should be ashamed of our conservative platform. The current administration is doing us a great favor by moving so fast with their progressive platform that it is shaking the ordinary citizenry out of their apathy. It is driving the average person back to these first principles and the truths upon which they stand, and it is creating a desire to understand the American ideal. This momentum—if backed with a concern for our history and heritage and the willingness to do the hard work of overcoming objections—can leave us with hope that our country will improve dramatically.

With a renaissance of conservative thought, the Congress can be taken back in 2010 and the Presidency in 2012, but if we stop there it will not be enough. Just as a person learns to become a carpenter or an engineer, we too need to learn to become citizens and not mere taxpayers.

I still hold these truths—do you? If you say yes, you’d better be ready to give an argument, because traditions change. The internal rules of institutions are not universal, and our country requires a common goal, but truth is clear and can be shown by reason. The truths enumerated in our founding documents are precious and are in need of our care. We have been given a republic if we can keep it, and what was self-evident to our founders is no longer self-evident today.

The polls show Sen. John McCain is viewed as the popular candidate by voters as the choice to represent Arizona in the US Senate with JD never able to muster a majority.  With the Hayworth campaign floundering in fundraising and unable to define his previous Congressional record as positive, even if Hayworth could overcome his huge public polling deficit behind McCain and pull out a primary victory, can he raise enough money to overcome his personal reputation/record and Glassman’s personal wealth ? 

Glassman is the son of very wealthy California liberals and closely aligned with Raul Grijalva.

If the name Dennis DeConcini rings a bell…it is the wake-up alert that without a doubt a vote for JD in the primary is too much to risk. 

Article from the Wall Street Journal Forum by Eddie Sessions: 

“I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father” was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope” followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself.

There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself is “communist with a small ‘c’” was the real author. His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S.. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital.

How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool” in a place where agriculture was the anti-thesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole.

And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska . It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984′s Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.

Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters. Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to “wish away” some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe , having gained a foothold in Spain.

The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign “world tour” were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions. Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party’s hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party.

It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues. Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an “obstreperous” Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against “jumping to conclusions” about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber “an isolated extremist” only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot. He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America .. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.

The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration, or he naively seeks to wish away the truth. Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life. When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review.

He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden. We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?”

The question then is, who is the “voice” behind the dummy?  Who’s lap is he sitting on?  I can only refer to the Bible on that count, “… by their fruits you shall know them.”

“This morning the British army in Boston…disgracefully quitted all their strongholds in Boston and Charlestown, fled from before the army of the United Colonies, and took refuge on board their ships…The joy of our friends in Boston, on seeing the victorious and gallant troops of their country enter the town almost at the heels of their barbarous oppressors, was inexpressibly great.”

-As reported by an American newspaperman after the first Washington-led, American victory in Boston, 1776.

Just think about what conservatives have accomplished in 2010. Not in my wildest dreams could I have thought that a fiscally conservative candidate could be Massachusetts’ newest senator. Like General Washington’s victory at Dorchester Heights, the war for the future of liberty in America won its first great battle in the Bay State.

Like many of you, I saw the storm clouds gathering for over a year. The previous administration began an attack on our constitution and our free market system through big government conservatism. President Obama continued the assault on our liberties by putting big government into overdrive. Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Giffords all supported nationalizing our industries, taking over our healthcare and strangling us with environmental regulation. The free citizens of Southern Arizona and these United States are saying, “NO MORE!”

Pundits on every cable news channel are likening this year to 1994; however, they are missing the fundamental difference between that year and this: 1994 was a Republican revolution, 2010 is a CONSERVATIVE REVOLUTION.

No sitting congressman or senator is safe this year. Not Harry Reid, not my opponent, Gabrielle Giffords, not John Murtha, not John McCain. Both Republican and Democratic voters are shouting, “This is not about political teams, team elephant or team donkey! This is about limited government, fiscal sanity and free market solutions to our nation’s problems!” It is fundamentally important for incumbents and challengers alike to realize the following fact: if Republicans are conservatives, they will win. If Republicans are merely tax cutters, but have a record of out-of-control spending, they will lose. If Democrats are conservative, they will win. If Democrats vote with Pelosi, they will lose.

The greatness of the conservative revolution of 2010 lies in its ability to act as a driving force for America far longer than its Republican counterpart 15 years prior. The Republican revolution of 1994 was successful in its onset, but failed to be a lasting movement because it was not wholly and completely rooted in conservatism. Identity without ideology is empty, and the longer the Republican Party occupied the seats of power in Congress, the easier it was for them to stagnate and whither from the vine.

In the conservative revolution of 2010, candidates like me see the Republican Party as an organized medium for my actual ideology, conservatism. Where some want to label Republicans as “the party of no,” conservatives will always be full of pragmatic, new ideas, rooted in the first principles of the Founders. While Republican values are malleable and ill-defined, conservative values are fixed, well reasoned, and applicable to everything from political theory to everyday living.

As a conservative and as republican, I announced my candidacy in early 2009 because I saw the revolution ahead of us could not only be victorious, but also glorious. In my race, in Arizona’s 8th congressional district, I am battling against a big government Republican in the primary and a big government Democrat in the general. It’s time to open up the western front in the conservative revolution of 2010.

Jesse Kelly
Congressional Candidate
Arizona’s 8th District

 This famous speech captures the sentiment well:

 It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic: The Man in the Arena” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France – April 23, 1910

John McCain is not perfect nor has he had a perfect career.  That is what is so hard about being human, none of us are.  But, he is the current voice of strength for conservative ideals in the Senate.  Scott Brown made that very clear last week when he singled out Senator John McCain in his acceptance speech.  I find it funny how appreciative conservatives where when they thought his relationship with Lieberman could be used to our benefit, but how quickly some turned it into a sign of defection when it suits a negative attack.   Sarah Palin is everyone’s darling based on her vision and beliefs, unless of course she would dare suggest she supports John McCain’s re-election.  She is either flawed or foolish…but she cannot be right?  

I do not believe this is the time for our energies to be spent on electing a different Republican when we have so much opportunity to elect NEW Republicans in Dem held seats.  I am not dissuaded with the twisted tales, selective snippets, or outright personal attacks.  Do I agree with everything he has ever done or said?  NO.  Is John McCain a bullheaded, hard-nosed, my way or the highway guy?  Probably.  Does he play hardball and expect you to be ready for it or get out of his way?  I think so.  Could it be those very attributes have uniquely placed for the time we are in to be a stalwart of Republican domination of the Democratic efforts?  Definitely!

With the victory tonight in Massachusetts, the “Progressive’s” effort to “fundamentally” socialize America has been derailed!

Democrats (and even incumbents) across the country need to be very afraid as conservatives and independent voters who are now leaning right of center, are out for “political blood.”

Here in Arizona, even our own incumbent Republicans should not take it for granted that they are in good favor with the voters. Governor Brewer should expect to face an extremely difficult primary by challenger John Munger and man on a mission, Dean Martin, who has been warning for over a year of the impending Arizona budget doom.

Democrats in supposedly “safe” districts should now take heed as insurgent-backed conservative candidates like Ruth McClung and Janet Contreras wage ground-level campaigns against incumbents, ultra-liberal Raul Grijalva, and deeply submerged, Ed Pastor. The best and most tangible consequence of the Massachusetts miracle would be for both these women to receive the full-fledged support of tea party activists and anyone intolerable of the status quo.

Kirkpatrick, Mitchell and Giffords can also expect the same type of beating from whoever wins the GOP primaries in their districts.

If fiction can become cold hard reality in a place like Massachusetts – the bluest of blue states in the union – it can even happen in Arizona’s purple districts.

Finally, Senator McCain should not take it for granted that “this is his time” despite his best efforts to give the perception he is leading the charge. This is no longer his battle. This is the people’s battle now – those who have tirelessly worked, protested and waited for battleground days as today. The people want fresher angrier people from among their midst to wage this war of ideas. Old warriors step aside. New warriors have arrived and it is their time.

But if taxes are off the table, Afghan war costs are inexorably rising and cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and entitlement programs are politically impossible, as pressure builds for a second stimulus, how does one reduce a deficit of $1.4 trillion?

How does one stop the exploding national debt from surging above 100 percent of GDP?

America is the oldest and greatest constitutional republic, the model for all the others. But if our elected politicians are incapable of imposing the sacrifices needed to pull the nation back from the brink of a devaluation or default, is democratic capitalism truly, as Francis Fukuyama told us just two decades ago, the future of mankind?

What the looming fiscal crisis of this country portends is nothing less than a test of whether this democratic republic is sustainable.

Buchanan paints a devastatingly bleak outcome for these United States which makes me wonder if it does indeed happen, won’t those in control ultimately get to rebuild the Constitutional Republic or Socialist State as they deem fit?

Call me a natural born pessimist but I cannot see any light at the end of this economic tunnel other than November 4th, 2010.

By Emil Franzi, Special to The Explorer

I do not “blog,” although I post on some. I dislike the format because it allows for anonymity, which I don’t hide behind on my own posts. You want to run off at the pen, have the guts to tell me who you really are like I tell you.

Something we who do talk radio learn quickly is to dump the dumb caller as rapidly as possible. Allowing some yahoo to rant is an invitation to station change.

The late Marshall Fritz, well known in libertarian and educational freedom circles, once explained to me a principle from Little League coaching he called “Gresham’s Law of People.” Taken from the economic principle that bad money drives out good, he believed that loud-mouthed jerks drove away good folks and should be purged early and often for the health of any organization.

Newspaper editors have discretion when it comes to letters to the editor, which must be signed hopefully by a real person or even the person who actually wrote them. Some blogs are policed better than others. But the amount of illiterate drivel allowed to pass from left, right and ignorant center is still appalling.

I find many right-wing posters to be embarrassments, not for me personally or my philosophy, but for themselves. Hyper-active newbies always emerge whenever there is any kind of popular awakening, from opposing the Viet Nam War in the ’60s to opposing the Obama leftist agenda now.

California conservatives had a name for the worst of this category in the early ’60s – one-book Birchers. They read “I Saw Poland Betrayed.” Actually, they got up to page 23. It took three days. They found out there were communists and that was enough. They usually didn’t stay active long. This was pre-blog or they would’ve hung around longer.

There are left-wing equivalents, but they’re not my problem. You know who they are. Some of them on both sides are decent folks who just don’t know any better. My job is to help clean up my own. Best way to do that is to clarify the most commonly abused terminology.

• RINO, or Republican in Name Only. A simple measurement separates them from liberal Republicans. RINOS are Republicans like Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup, who are not only liberals but don’t support other Republicans in general elections. Except for the Mecham recall in 1988, Sen. McCain hasn’t publicly dumped on other GOP nominees. He’s not a RINO and is too inconsistent to qualify as a liberal. I think CINO probably fits him best.

Conservatives and particularly conservative Republicans must learn these distinctions. Mayor Guliani is not a conservative, but supports the ticket. Mayor Bloomberg is a Republican out of convenience only and doesn’t. Real RINOS were the GOP officials who walked on Barry Goldwater in 1964. Those like Oregon’s Mark Hatfield who didn’t deserve consideration for playing by the rules.

• Conservative. There’s broad philosophical diversity in the movement which includes some libertarians. There are libertarians who don’t consider themselves conservatives, and conservatives who agree. Before you decide to yell sell-out or RINO, please note the lack of conservative consensus on immigration, fair tax, term limits, the Afghan war, and the foreign policy diversity you get from Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan. Both qualifed as RINOs for having once run on another party’s ticket. Republicans holding party roles talking third party also qualify.

• Socialist. Has specific meanings and, like conservative, is highly diverse. Marxist? Positivist? Fabian? National? Fascist? Hint: It was not socialized medicine when the Roman Army sent early medics along with each Legion. Learn to focus.

There’s more. Hopefully there are some folks I have thoroughly offended. I can only hope those wishing to berate me will use their real names.

Hear Emil Franzi and Tom Danehy Saturdays 1-4 p.m. on KVOI 1030AM.

A member is making a speech from the podium while other members can be seen in various frivolous poses, including playing video games on their desktops. It is being used to encourage term limits for Congress.

Only the legislative body pictured is the California Assembly, which has been term-limited for 20 years. It doesn’t work.

One of the great by-products of federalism is the ability it gives states to find out how well certain things will work – or not. States like Arizona having term limits aren’t governed any better than those that don’t.

One problem with term limit proponents is their belief that the Founding Fathers wanted everybody to just serve for a bit and go home. I devoted an entire column recently to listing all the major figures in our nation’s birth, and noting how from Sam Adams to James Monroe they all spent considerable time in various public offices, both appointive and elective, and we should be grateful to them for that.

The short-term service argument is a myth. What matters is the ability and quality of the character of those we choose.

One thing has changed in the last 200 years, and term limit supporters would be wise to notice – and propose remedies – for it. We allowed the terms of office to be lengthened to the degree that too many public officials are far less reachable.

Patrick Henry served seven terms as Governor of Virginia, John Hancock six as Governor of Massachusetts. Those were one-year terms. Most local and state officials had one-year terms well into the 19th Century.

Debates over ratification of the original constitution focused not on term limits but on term length. Many complaints were made about allowing members of the U.S. House to serve for two full years.

The idea of representatives as policy makers as opposed to actual representatives became popular with academics and among the original Progressives towards the end of the 19th Century, when terms of office began to be extended. The argument given was “we don’t want our representatives to be constantly campaigning.”

Translation – we don’t want them going back to the folks who elect them to discover the ideas we’re selling them on really suck. We need to isolate them from their constituents for as long as possible to get all this unpopular crap passed.

Two-year terms for governors and others became common at the beginning of this century, driven by a coalition of policy wonks and politicians who wanted less supervision. That has now been extended almost everywhere to four-year terms. The group of elitists centering around former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is pushing it for legislators.

One unintended consequence of the four-year term in Arizona has been the incredible growth in recalls, particularly in local governments like town councils and school boards where the jurisdictions are still small enough to be handled by citizen rebellion. It would make more sense to simply put the terms back to two years.

It would also make sense to reduce terms for all state and county officials as well as city councils and school boards. One can directly chart the growth of government at all levels to the growth in the length of terms for those who did the growing.

One additional advantage is that off-year and local elections are great message senders to those holding power. Having them twice as often would greatly enhance that communications device and give us less reliance on guys like Rasmussen and Zogby for national trends.

Hear Emil Franzi and Tom Danehy Saturdays 1-4 p.m. on KVOI 1030AM.

Attention Big Game Hunters - Target Sighed

I have read the many concerns about the Arizona 2010 Victory Plan Draft.  I agree with all of them.  However, the most egregious part of the plan to me is the third bullet under overview and goals.  “Reelecting all current federal office holders”  The special deal “earmark” for federal office holders is a prime example of why the American voter rates the Congress , both Republican and Democrats, so poorly.  The hubris in the directive that we reelect all current federal office holders is unfathomable and hypocritical.  The back-up for it, “popularity of our incumbents” is just down right  untruthful.

Have the Stakeholders not read the polls indicating how out-of-touch with the Republican base the Republican voter believes our federal representatives are?   In essence, the stakeholders are telling us they have done away with the primary elections for our federal incumbents.   They believe the governor should go through a primary but not our special privileged federal office holders.   I know Campaign Finance Reform was an incumbent protection act, but I had no idea it would be taken to this length.

The Stakeholders like to proclaim that the Republican Party is a bottom-up organization.  This plan proves otherwise.  The Stakeholders have become like the Congressional Democrats they complain about who abuse their political power.

The late GOP Congressman and 1972 American Independent Party Presidential candidate John Schmitz always claimed he was a member of the John Birch Society to appeal to the moderates in his district. In 1968, I was elected chairman of the Los Angeles County Young Republicans as the centrist candidate. I was supported by both the Birchers and the Objectivists.

I’m not making this up. I only report it to again illustrate that the center is a relative concept, and that moderation is far more a demeanor than an epistemology.

I was correctly taken to task for a prior column where I stated that should State Sen. Jonathan Paton enter the race for the GOP nomination in CD8 next year, he might run as a moderate. Sen. Paton called to tell me that’s difficult for someone with his solid conservative voting record on issues from gun control and abortion to taxation and spending.

The “moderate” possibility came from a Democrat consultant friend of his. Paton responded that was someone proposing how he should run, not how he would if he does.

Fair enough, but some advice. Spend a little more time with Tea Party folks and a little less with Democrat consultants.

My old colleague Jim Nintzel at the Tucson Weekly sees Paton as the GOP heavyweight in the CD8 race, and thinks it’s a replay of the Democrat CD8 primary of 2006, where Iraqi combat veteran Jeff Latas was wiped out by State Sen. Gabby Giffords’ late entry, with Iraqi combat veteran Jesse Kelly playing the Latas role and Paton Gabby’s. Putting aside two other Iraqi combat vets already in the GOP race, Brian Miller and Andy Goss, and Paton’s own Iraqi service, the races aren’t analogous. Here’s why.

Democrats aren’t Republicans. Democrat primary voters aren’t impressed by a 20-year lieutenant colonel with an Air Force Cross, and are downright suspicious even when he’s a lefty. My take on Democrat behavior erred judging that race because of my own biases. Jim’s current take on GOP behavior errs for the same reason.

2010 isn’t 2006. Politics are tidal. Conservative Republicans now have the wind at their back instead of in their face. And incumbent legislators have hardly grown in stature.

Latas never raised any money. Kelly already has a quarter million. Latas garnered little big name support. Kelly has many heavy hitters both in and out of state, including talk show host Mark Levin, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, and former House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter joining Congressman Trent Franks, Sheriffs Joe Arpaio and Paul Babeu, and Paton’s State Senate colleague Al Melvin in state. Even more important, the troops who turn out primary voters really like him.

Others are already committed to Goss, who’s from the Cochise County portion of Paton’s Senate district, and Miller, who gets to even more gun shows than I do. Paton may be too late. Eight months ago when Kelly announced, Gabby looked like a re-election slam dunk. Somewhere between Cap and Tax and ObamaCare the blue dog faded to pastel.

One comparison Republicans hope won’t re-occur is the clumsy muscle job party heavies pulled in favor of State Rep. Steve Huffman in the 2006 GOP primary. Conservatives would now rebel if you tried to force feed them Ronald Reagan. And some who drove the Huffman operation, like GOP money guru Jim Click, already support Kelly.

Paton isn’t Huffman. He’s in the GOP conservative mainstream ca. 2010 along with Kelly, Miller and Goss. Should he choose to run he’ll have a good shot as long as whatever GOP establishment types supporting him don’t follow the heavy-handed route and make him look like Huffman.

Hear Emil Franzi and Tom Danehy Saturdays 1-4 p.m. on KVOI 1030 AM.

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9) Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

The email also contains some guidelines on how to apply the list.

“RESOLVED, that a candidate who disagrees with three or more of the above stated public policy position of the Republican National Committee, as identified by the voting record, public statements and/or signed questionnaire of the candidate, shall not be eligible for financial support and endorsement by the Republican National Committee”

I feel that this is a pretty comprehensive list yet not too restrictive, especially if only 80% is passing. Democrats have hidden the ball effectively by hammering the narrative that we are exclusive, unwilling to allow flexible viewpoints into the party. Conservatives have been angry, not that every candidate meets our standard, but that the tent is too big.  There comes a point where you’re not a Republican and if that line can be defined it makes it a lot more difficult for RINO’s.  The list is not perfect but it is not supposed to be. It leaves room for libertarians and squishy moderates. It is something that most of us ( Republicans ) can agree on with a dissent here and there. The RNC knows it must eliminate this third party talk while reassuring a place for everyone in the Republican party. The fact is less and less people are identifying themselves as Republicans and though conservatives continue to be the most popular political label we need to fix the problem. I support fantasy politics and realize that areas with a higher concentration of Democrats might not elect a Goldwater type candidate. I am fine with this and so should you. This is a good move.

The media will continue to sound the alarm that our party is fracturing but we know better. Republicans suffered the consequences of having a candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District who was so far from our principles that conservatives put their own man on the ballot. We lost, barely, but we made our point. There has to be some standard that we govern the party by and I am willing to embrace this list, with it’s accompanying guidelines.

You hear this Olympia Snowe (R-ME) !!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The .PDF of the entire email is available by clicking HERE.

UPDATE: VIA  Allahpundit: “Apparently, Steele has nothing to do with it. It comes from a bunch of members working on their own, who want the full list put before the RNC for adoption at the next convention.”

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Businesses are the manifestation of productivity in a society. Business is one outlet through which people express natural human creativity in creating and producing goods and services for the community. Businesses are the fruit of human imagination and problem-solving, and are borne of an awareness of the needs of the local society and how these needs can be met.

Businesses can be as small as a carpenter fashioning one table at a time, a gardener employing two people to care for fifty clients’ yards, a babysitter who provides services to two families. Many businesses are as simple as a chauffeur saving up his money to buy a two room lodging, one half to live in, the other half to rent out. He raises his family’s standard of living modestly, but measurably and enhances his children’s chances to higher achievement in the future. Instead of a renter himself, he is now an owner of a small, income-producing asset which he can sell later if he chooses. Another fellow makes his start by hawking drinks on the street. He saves enough money to pay for a kiosk so he doesn’t have to stand in the sun, wind and rain anymore, and sell more drinks, and he’s noticed people like a certain type of biscuit so he adds that to his inventory. In year of this, he has saved up enough money to build a small room, where he can stock fifty items, matches, tea, tomato paste, the staples he’s discovered the local community will buy. To make a sale, he’ll break sets, sell half-packages, whatever he perceives his clients can and will buy.

This natural identification of a need and a solution to addressing that need happens every day. It’s impossible to suppress and shouldn’t be suppressed. In the midst of a refugee camp of displaced people, 10,000 of them, chased and beaten out of their homes with hardly more than the clothes on their backs, within two days, while government and humanitarian aid agencies sat in meetings to discuss the emergency, hawkers had already figured out how to get small goods into the guarded camp and were wandering through selling items which people needed. People require goods and services to live and to function, and other people are willing to do the hustle to make those necessities or luxuries available. The two, consumer and provider, are brought together, they exchange payment for goods and they both depart satisfied.

In America, this free market tradition has brought the nation and the individual great comfort and wealth, yet many people in America do not perceive themselves as wealthy. But a comparison of the standard of living of an American carpenter versus an African, or South-Asian (Indian) carpenter dramatically displays the difference between an American carpenter’s comfort and a Third World carpenter’s comfort. An American carpenter, one of the trades, owns a car, owns a truck, owns a house. There is nothing noteworthy in America to see a Middle Class carpenter in a three bedroom house, with two full baths, a half bath and a garage, in fact it is expected and the norm, usually with much more. In the Third World, a carpenter is of the Middle Class, with a trade by which he can produce a regular income. His transportation is a bicycle. His family lives in a nine by twelve foot rented room, and shares a toilet with up to ten other families also renting rooms alongside his. A single room is his home – kitchen, salon, bedroom for the whole family in one. The major feature is a sturdy locked door to keep the thieves out at night. He’s admired. He has a nice little sofa, his wife has a decent set of cooking pots, a nice tea server for guests, and underneath the embroidered dust cloth is a second-hand TV, which can be used when the electricity is on. His wife fills their family jerry cans with water from the communal tap at the end of the building. She knows when to fill as the water is rationed through the city, on in her neighborhood for certain hours of the day only.

Both men have the same trade. They both are solidly representative of their respective nations’ Middle Classes, but the American carpenter has benefited from a business environment that his Third World counterpart does not have.

The Third World has several critical flaws that make it Third World, a World without Business.

The chauffeur mentioned earlier is real. He lives in the country of Guinea in West Africa. He is a professional driver who works for one of the international organizations, so he’s had a steady, decent-paying job, so with part of his earnings he built a small building. His family lived in one 9 by 12 foot rooms and he rented out the other 9 by 12 to a tenant. It took him years to be able to save up enough to shift out of renter to min-home-owner and mini-landlord. He began to enjoy a bit more income to send his kids to a better school. His home/rental was situated in a busy, growing neighborhood about three miles out of downtown Conakry and he was poised to expand to rent out a second room to add a little more again to his monthly income. But today, his income is only his salary and he must rent a place for his family. Why?

The chauffeur pointed out to us what happened, indicating a restricted construction area we were passing by one day. The government decided that the square mile community was in the exact location they absolutely needed to put up new governmental and international agency buildings. The entire neighborhood was razed to the ground, not a person of the thousands in it had any say in the matter and not a soul was compensated. After years of saving, plus the hard work of construction, the chauffeur was wrecked, his home and rental, destroyed. He’s older, and has fewer years of income ahead before mandatory retirement; his investment for his family and his old age is gone. Instead of having some buffer and cushion, he is back to the scramble of his early days, but with more mouths to feed. Every business and residence in that area, including scores and scores of small kiosks and shops and services, was literally wiped off the map. The investment of the wealthy, government-connected were enhanced by the government taking that land and handing it to contractors and politically-connected landowners who then had the guarantee of years of lucrative leasing to international organizations, but the investments of thousands of little guys was destroyed. A fraction of those micro-investors had the resources and drive left to start over, wary to invest in anything that could be taken away again.It wasn’t Big Corporation that hurt the little guy, it was Big Government, and what was destroyed was Business. The people moved on to more squalid living, and just make do, because they had no choice. But many of them have lost heart to start another business, to invest again because of the disappointment and discouragement of their loss of years of sacrifice. They are unable to raise their standard of living. They remain at hardly more than a subsistence level of economic activity. Every time they try to improve, their efforts are knocked down. First World “experts” tsk and shake their heads, decrying the local people’s woeful lack of initiative as the barrier to development, without a glimmer of understanding as to why a universal, natural in-born human trait was missing. Yet, immigrant Africans are amongst the fastest-rising immigrant achievers in America. If these people had no initiative because of their culture, how come they flourish in America? Initiative hadn’t been missing, it had been punished. Likewise, international corporations learn the same brutal lessons about the wisdom or futility of investment efforts when their companies are overrun, their employees threatened, and their assets are seized by national governments made up of political officials scheming to enrich themselves on other people’s work.

A survey of Third World businesses will reveal a pattern of cynical adaptability. With confiscation a real threat, businesses large and small are stripped to the bare bones. Warehouses and factories appear dilapidated, lest – by being neat and well-kept, and noticeably prosperous -they catch the eye of a covetous government official. Not a penny of investment which can be gone without goes into maintaining the infrastructure – just enough to keep it from falling on everyone’s heads, no more. No paint, no improvements, just mildewing plaster. Private businesspeople in the Third World have an emergency plan, which includes their passports in one hand at all times, so they can abandon the country within hours if they have to, to literally walk away from everything they own there, and everything they own was deliberately chosen to be expendable. One Third World writer complained a few years ago, “At least with the old days, the “corruptocrats” would invest their money locally. But with the Socialists, Communists and Dictators seizing property and banks, the rich folks don’t dare keep their money in country. They move it out immediately to foreign shelters, so local investment is practically dead.”

At the micro-level, it is the same. Third World streets are lined with rough, scrap-board tables so unattractive, they appear ready for the junk pile, but they are in service during the day holding the stock for sale of the small vender. When the police are sent out by the government-connected shop owners to remove the low-overhead competition, there’s not much to smash, and if it does get smashed, a few nails and another cross-support usually does the trick , and the goods are on display again after a discreet waiting period.

Business as a natural human endeavor needs certain basic conditions to survive and flourish. The lack of these five conditions produces the reality of the decrepit Third World economy:

1) Security. No one can run a business of any sort when rebels or armies or bandits rule the streets. Bullets, bombs and robberies are the results of two different failures of security: First, national security against all manifestations of foreign or domestic aggression which undermines and endangers normal societal functions; second, local security of a professional and competent police force. Effective local policing for a time in Lagos, Nigeria, abruptly and effectively brought a halt to massive robberies, where bandit gangs would start at one end of a street and rob every single house to the other end of it – dozens and dozens of frantic calls to the police unanswered, plus the alarming highway bridge robberies where in broad daylight, thieves would set up a roadblock at the two-mile long stretch of lagoon bridge, trapping hundreds of vehicles over the ocean waters so the thieves could rob each car, and everyone in them, one after the other. No police.

2) Property Rights. People of high and low classes will invest generously if they are guaranteed to be able to keep their investment. If their investment is not protected by law, subject to confiscation by government or by covetous competitors, people become discouraged and defeated in hopes of moving up the economic ladder. If ownership cannot be proven or protected, people are unable to buy or sell any asset with confidence.

3) Infrastructure. Expansion of business and increasing sophistication of business activity requires good roads and other transportation modes, plus reliable utilities like electricity and water, and communications. Commerce, and all business suffer greatly in Kenya due to the horrible state of the nation’s roads. Potholes, the infamous “Kenyan Massage” known here in Arizona as “washboard,” crumbling tarmac, and narrow routes cause accidents, loss of life, loss of property, vehicle damage, and delay, delay delay, with high transportation losses that hamper trade and reduce profits. Nigeria, an OPEC country, has fuel shortages as endemic as malaria thanks to government artificially setting low prices. Government officials commandeer cheap gasoline and diesel from the refineries and sell them in the neighboring countries for many times the Nigerian official price. Not much is left over for Nigerians. Cars queue for a week at the filling stations. The employee or boss cannot sit a week in a line at the gas station, so a driver must hold the place, sleeping in the vehicle, ready to move ahead the moment the tanker rumbles in to refill the station’s empty tanks. Nigerians, in order to maintain some semblance of continuity of working must horde gasoline and diesel. Explosions are common, thanks to poorly stored fuel. As the days without gas increase, so the number of cars on the roads decreases. People with enough money buy generators to provide electricity when the city power goes out, hours of a day, or two-three-four days in a row. This is a constant drain on productivity, and increases all costs on everything in the country.

4) Reasonable Taxation. Overtaxed people have no money to invest. Overtaxed businesses are a double tax ; first on the individual, then on the business. Businesses have to pass expenses on to the consumers in the calculations of the pricing for goods and services. There is point where more and more consumers cannot pay the increases, and the buy and sell activity slows or halts. Businesses cannot employ people if they can’t sell anything, and bribes to government officials to stay in business without harassment are simply another form of taxation.

5) Human Resource Development: Business can only expand as far as the ability to recruit competent people. Effective schooling to improve the productivity of people is key to an upwardly mobile population. Uneducated or poorly educated people are not effective in their ability to take on work or take on higher responsibility once employed.

Government doesn’t have to be the enemy of Business, but through human history the trend is that governments set themselves at every opportunity to shackle or destroy natural human business interaction and activity, through heavy taxation, confiscation, dereliction of security and disrespect for Rule of Law. America’s innovation was to clear the playing field, to recognize the importance of the merchant and the producer, to allow Human Business to flourish.

The Third World is right across the horizon. It can be reached in a day from any place on the planet. What excuse then is there to ignore or dismiss the reality of how these nations remain in poverty and human stagnation? What excuse is there is to claim that American Business has not served Americans well when the standard of living for the American Middle Class has exceeded the Middle Class of every other nation in every measure since American Independence, and the evidence is openly verifiable? Government is best when it provides a few key neutral functions which enable human beings to express their aspirations through their own hard work and initiative. It is at its worse when it covets all human productivity while being crushingly jealous of the human natural cooperative, social drive for business. Actions have consequences. America, indeed no country, is immune from becoming part of the “Third World,” a moribund and aspiration-crushing nation-state of being – The World without Business.