http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23537815/

In a profession where hypocrisy is a consistently staple quality, Eliot Spitzer acted only slightly more glaringly than the average elitist liberal  lawyer from the East Coast. Granted that Mr. Spitzer carefully cultivated an image of a no-nonsense corruption busting prosecutor for eight years, however, anyone familiar with him or New York will tell you that his politics and his personal life were at odds foursquare.

Born into millions of inherited wealth, Spitzer despised people who wanted to make money the hard way by working for it. Hence his incessant bullying, harassment, and elbow twisting use of law enforcement against brokerage houses, investment bankers, and corporations. An ardent foe of allowing poor New Yorkers to use their tax money to send their kids to good schools, Spitzer sent his own three children to elite academies that cost upwards of $ 30, 000 a year per pupil. A vociferous proponent of everyone paying higher taxes, the governor of New York never paid a dime over what was required of him in taxes and, no pun intended, failed to pay sales tax on the escort services he purchased at five thousand dollars a night (well, at least I hope it was a whole night for that kind of money).

This then is who Eliot Spitzer is and always has been. It is just that in this particular case, his hypocrisy was too much even for the liberal Democrats to publicly stomach.

While over for all intents and purposes, in a very technical sense the Republican nominating contest is still ongoing. Am I serious? You bet. Texas gynecologist Congressman Ron Paul continues to raise money and make his case, albeit as a matter of principle more than anything else.

And what a revolutionary principle it is that the federal government should operate strictly within the bounds of the Constitution. The Republican Party establishment would be utterly imprudent to brush off a campaign that has brought in millions of dollars in contributions and an equivalent amount of enthusiasm from otherwise disconnected younger voters in a year which has seen Democrats having a crushing advantage in dollars, enthusiasm, and youth.

 Don’t get me wrong. I have serious problems with Dr. Paul’s semi-isolationist foreign policy, his interpretation of parts of the Fourteenth Amendment, and his desire to abolish the Federal Reserve System.  Nonetheless, his steadfast defense of the ideals of the Founding Fathers is sincere in intellectual rigor and practice. Unlike any other member of Congress, he puts his money where his mouth is in refusing to take pork to his district or ask federal loans and grants to send his five kids through college. Federal overreach in matters of education, police powers, and social policymaking should concern every conservative and it certainly does bother Ron Paul. The Constitution is not any less important, as he says, when we are facing internal tensions or external threats. If anything, it is all the more important to hold on to its core principles to distinguish America from the others. That so many otherwise disengaged people, especially the younger ones, are attracted to such an intellectually sound Constitutional approach from a man old enough to be their grandfather is a sign that the GOP establishment will ignore to its long term peril. The best short term gesture that John McCain can make to the Ron Paul constituency is to let the good doctor speak at the convention. Let us not be like the Democrats who believe in prohibiting from speaking those Democrats who don’t toe the party orthodoxy (remember the 1992 and 1996 conventions where the supposedly ‘tolerant and open minded’ Clintons barred Pennsylvania Democrat Governor Casey and Maryland Democrat Governor Schaeffer from speaking?).

Knowing it from first hand experience that concentrated governmental power is dangerous, the Founding Fathers rightly disbursed such authority horizontally between the states and Washington. Still not convinced of the selflessness of politicians, they further divided power vertically at the federal level by establishing three co-equal branches of the central government.  Over the course of the past century both Democrats and Republicans, spurred on by hysteric demagoguery on the attention grabbing headlines of the day, have worked hard to eradicate the restraints on concentrated federal power. The cause celebre has been different for each major encroachment and the tools used have varied (federal judges, senior bureaucrats, the White House). What has remained the same is the rationale used: power must be concentrated for the good of the people’s [add ‘health’, ‘safety’, nutrition’, ‘children’…or whatever other feel good cause can convince you to give up a little bit of your liberty].

 Sad to admit but Dr. Paul stands as perhaps the only politician of consequence, never mind how limited that consequence is, who is willing to accept at face value the Jeffersonian warning that ‘those who give up a little liberty for a little safety deserve neither and are soon left bereft of either.’

 

The self inflicted wounds of the Republican Party are evident even in the reddest of the states. In my own Kansas, last year’s elections resulted in not only the Dems laying claim to the offices of governor and attorney general, but also increasing their minorities in the legislature and, more telling, increasing the registration proportion. In response-and only a bewildered group of Republicans can do this-the state GOP (by a plurality, not a majority though) elected as its chairman one of the least suitable people to bring ‘the party back’. A man whose Oxford and Ivy education failed to singularly make a dent in his buffoonish personality, Chairman KK (those are his initials!)  spends most of his time flying around the country hobnobbing with publicity seeking xenophobes, supremacists, and nativist groups rather than building a state party demoralized to its core. Only a guy of such dubious talents could have accomplished what is unheard of in our state’s political history: an alignment of major big business and small business groups with the Democratic Party. Even the farm lobby, usually a staple of sturdy Republican support, is moving towards the Democrats. With the spiky haired Missouri professor (yes, the dude teaches at a Missouri college!) in charge of the Kansas GOP, the Democratic Party of Kansas can lay off its staff: the GOP is doing their work for them for free. Now, I have been a close observer of the Kansas Republican party since my college days and seen some strange people at its helm (the perpetually confused Tim Shallenberger comes to mind). I have also seen some very humble, decent, and hard working folks who built a magnificent winning party (David Miller is a prime example).  But KK has to be the closest thing to a ‘gift to the Democrats chairman’ chairman that the state party has ever had in my memory.

Take it from a pro-military, pro-growth, pro-life, pro-business, pro-God conservative Reagan Republican who has 'been there' since College Republican times: never in recent history has the Kansas GOP selected a more ill-suited (oh yes, the suits he wears are very Hollywood type too), unprincipled demagogue as its chairman.

In yet another crystal clear indication of his unstable temperament and divisive personality, Bill Clinton shouted down pro-life students who asked him questions at a Sunday rally in Steubenville, Ohio. Unbecoming of a former President, and indicative of the type arrogance we can expect from another Clinton term in the White House, Bill Clinton pointed an agitated finger at two placard holding Steubenville University students and shouted “This is not your  rally.” He then went on a bizarre Castro-like tirade accusing the two college kids of trying to imprison patients and doctors (????). The observation lost on the rather otherwise astute former president was the fact that Steubenville is home to what is arguably the most conservative Catholic university in the country and even most of the Democrats in that town, descendants of Eastern European Catholic immigrants, are believers in the sanctity of human life.

Note to HillBill from KsReaganite: Wrong, Mr. President! This is a free country and even prolife folks have some residual free speech rights that you and your administration zealously tried to muzzle in the nineties by crafting new laws specifically targeting the free speech rights of the prolife community. Yet, as long as your wife and you have rallies in America, the First Amendment still applies. As to the substantive issue that irks you and your ilk so much, you got it all wrong and you know it. The issue at hand is not whether to sanction abortionists and their henchmen, but rather who gets to set social policy in a federal representative democracy: we believe that in the United States such policies should be set by the duly elected representatives of the people of the states, reflecting their interests, values, and deliberative compromises. On the hand, radical liberals like Bill and Hillary Clinton, in true fascist fashion, want a handful of permanently tenured ayatollahs, er I mean federal judges, to dictate such policies from high above. The Clintons believe in the Iranian model of policy-making; we conservatives believe in the American one.

Of all the candidates in either party, Mike Huckabee has offered the boldest plan for tax reform. Commonly known as the FairTax, the said plan would uproot the current income-based revenue generation system and replace it with one that taxes spending rather than productivity, savings, and entrepreneurship. There is a built-in threshold for low income families in the Fair Tax whereby they are given ‘pre-bates’ against spending on basic necessities like food, medicine, and clothing. The Republican nominee should adopt the plan and make drastic, structural tax reform once again the centerpiece of the party’s message.  

Understandably, the opposition has been, and will be, swift, powerful, and shrouded in sanctimonious cries of unfairness to the middle class. But it is not the middle class that is protesting the idea of shutting the IRS and gutting the thirty three thousand page long monstrosity of a  federal tax code. Far from it, the most vocal opponents of the FairTax are million dollar tax lawyers, multi million dollar lobbyists, and billion dollar subprime mortgage financiers all of whom feed at the trough of a complicated, loophole ridden tax system that the American public detests. Democrats, liberal Republicans, and federal tax bureaucrats are also dead set against the idea because it takes direct aim at their careers and livelihoods. Dozens of members of Congress who get re-elected by virtue of tweaking the bulky tax code on behalf of special interests are very upset at the prospect of having a tax code that is very short, transparent, and too legible to hide anything within it. Internal Revenue Service civil servants-those entities who neither understand civility nor service-are aghast that a national sales tax system will put most of them out to the pasture looking for productive jobs where they will actually have to serve the customer instead of bullying her. Now that will be an increase in unemployment that KsReaganite will wholeheartedly support: out of work arrogant bureaucrats.

 

When they had a common adversary in Mitt Romney, it was understandable that Mike Huckabee and John McCain were complimentary to each other. Romney is no longer a factor anymore. The civility and decency of the interaction between head-to-head opponents Huckabee and McCain, however, not only continues to exist but seems to have deepened. It shows class.

It has been well said that the true manners of a man are measured not by how he talks of his employer but his former employer, not by how he mentions his allies but how he mentions his erstwhile allies, not by how he speaks of his significant other, but how he speaks of his ex significant other.

Both Governor Huckabee and Senator McCain seem to be the kind of men into whom was instilled that ancient wisdom of decency that taught them to say ‘We are no longer together, and it is all my fault.’

Whether that kind of sterling character and class gets Senator McCain the presidency or not, I do not know. Frankly, much of our society is too given to ‘let it all out’ exhibitionist verbosity to appreciate the stoic decency of men like McCain. No wonder that the Republic’s intelligence services are having a tough time recruiting HUMINT these days; I mean can you believe being taciturn and being given an ultimatum that ‘we need to go to counseling because you are not being open with me’.

The biggest casualty of modern times is not innocence or unity or bi-partisanship but honor and faith. A McDonald drive through culture, even with organic cooking on the weekends, cannot long anchor ancient vanilla flavored qualities like faith and honor.

KsReaganite has had a long week with 12 hour workdays, he is reflecting too much, he needs his bourbon, his cigar, his solitude, and his patio to commiserate about honor and sacrifice, silence and selflessness, peace and peacefulness. Solitude and the commiseration on the deepest values and conflicts of the self must go hand in hand, so opined Captain Robert Falcon Scott, that glorious symbol of all such selfless thoughts that English-speaking people once held dear.

One of the unnoticed tragedy, what with all the presidential primary hoopla, of last Tuesday’s contests was liberal Democrat Congressman Albert Wynn of Maryland’s Fourth District. He was beaten by a relative newcomer, probably equally ultra-liberal, who banked on Wynn’s incumbency factor among other things. Now, there are very very few things Mr. Wynn and I agreed upon and I shouldn’t be shedding too many tears on his apparent political demise. But I guess I do.

See, Al Wynn was one of those extremely few members of Congress who truly cared for children of broken homes. A divorced father himself who had to fight tooth and nail, and expend all his limited savings, to keep meaningful relationship with his children, Wynn did not buy the nonsense that the powerful divorce industry sold in the halls of power. He was amongst a handful of Representatives and Senators who had the raw courage to speak on behalf of the rights of children when the entire machinery of the federal government, state courts, social workers, and sleazy lawyers was arrayed against the kids. Like me, Al Wynn found it unconscionable that the livelihoods of petty bureaucrats and campaign coffers of unethical politicians were helped in direct proportion to the number of children who are whisked away from the lives of their parents.

I hope against hope that Al Wynn runs as an independent Democrat in November and wins (it is a safe Democrat seat so no Republican has a chance anyway).

In a different part of the country, businessman Tim Burns is running for the Congressional seat vacated by Louisiana’s newly elected reformist governor Bobby Jindal. It is only appropriate that the good people of Louisiana’s First District nominate Burns in the March 8 primary because he is a principled conservative and no-nonsense reformer in the vein of his predecessor. With a record of no-apologies defense of innocent life, deficit and tax reduction, and school choice in Louisiana’s otherwise corrupt legislature, Tim Burns will bring a much needed image change for the political class of that state. And he will be a solid asset for the true blue conservatives in Washington DC.

Thought 1: We know that Senator John McCain has consistently opposed the abuse of federal tax dollars to extract DNA from bears in Montana. As such he has endeared himself to the bear population that resents such a federally funded intrusion of privacy. It should come as no surprise then that the McCain campaign announced a National Bear-man for the McCain operation who would presumably work alongside the national Chair-man of the operation. Informed sources reveal that the National Bear-man, currently in partial hibernation, is a brown bear named CB who was originally a part of the Florida GOP.

Thought 2: Today, yours truly saw a true pro-choice bumper sticker he loved. Heck, I could use that bumper sticker proudly. It says

I AM PRO CHOICE: EVERY UNBORN BABY SHOULD HAVE A CHOICE

Right on!!!

Thought 3: For understandable reasons I am removing the Romney for President link from my blog. It's been fun but now we have a nominee and its time to fight the good fight unitedly for values dear to us: lower taxes, national security, free markets, life, and constructionist judges. The alternative is a high tax burden, unconditional surrender, socialized economy, taxpayer funded abortion till the day of (or maybe even day after) delivery, and judges who act like unelected tyrants.

 

 

Most of my readers and my friends know well the acute Anglophilia with which I identify. Thus it comes as a horror of horrors and albeit a warning to us on this side of the Atlantic when I read this news report:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080204/od_afp/britainpeoplehistoryoffbeat
Most Englishmen and Englishwomen, products of mass public schools run amock by the amptly abbreviated NUT (National Union of Teachers, the English equivalent of our NEA), think that Sherlock Holmes rather than Winston Churchill is real. Mind you that most English families, just like their American counterparts, do not have the choice of sending their children to a school of their choice anymore. The result is a new generation that is supposed to take the mantle of what once was the greatest civilizing empire in the world. What a pity that those who conquered everything and everyone from Scots nearby to the Indians faraway, have great grandchildren who have no concept of that history or the men who made that history. What a shame for the English speaking peoples of the world.
But then NUT is probably already lobbying for teaching kids Gaelic and French anyway. The English may have defeated the Scots, the Irish, the Germans, and the Indians, but England's teachers have certainly won back all that was lost.