Category Archives: Republicans

The Gipper’s Penchant For ‘Gargantuan Government’

Conservatism, Government, Intellectualism, Israel, Liberty, Music, Republicans

At Beliefnet.com, Jack Kerwick rips into a certain elephantiasis to have plagued Ronald Reagan—the Gipper’s penchant for “gargantuan government.” So far, I have only 4 comments, all of them positive, on “The ‘Reagan Revolution’: A Myth Exploded” by Jack Kerwick:

With rare exception, virtually every “star” in the movement is a neoconservative. From the personalities on Fox News to the shining lights of “conservative” talk radio, from “conservative” politicians to the most well known “conservative” writers, there is scarcely an intellect to be found that isn’t indebted to the neoconservative worldview.

[Jack Kerwick, Dec. 26, 2012]

1) Technically, Jack may be right to invoke the word “intellect” with respect to the perpetual parade of mega mouths seen on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, etc. But there must be a better way (a word combination that triggered my musical memory: Watch what passes for pop music in Israel. It’s v e r y g o o d. More solid stuff from “Noa” here. And more about Mira Awad here).

How about “intellectuals who are not intelligent”?

2) Republican Ann Coulter has fleetingly voiced this “Reagan Epiphany,” saying that “Ronald Reagan should not be held up as ‘the touchstone for every [other Republican] candidate.’” But that’s as far as Ms. Coulter’s philosophical integrity went.

3) In fairness, and unlike almost all other Republican candidates, Reagan had the ability to brilliantly enunciate the principles of liberty. Judging from his soaring rhetoric about our (small “r”) republican liberties, Reagan understood these freedoms both viscerally and intellectually. This goes to the Gipper’s innate intelligence, which is forever disputed by the pinko pukes on the left. Intelligence why? Because the argument from liberty is a rational argument; the argument for collectivism an emotional one.

4) In some measure, Ronald Reagan’s affinity for freedom in words but not deeds bolsters another of Jack Kerwick’s brutally honest observations. This one pertains to the “inexcusable” nature of any “ignorance of the immensity of our national government, say, and ignorance of the sheer powerlessness of any one person or even group of persons to scale it back to so much as a shadow of its counterpart from the eighteenth century. …”

UPDATED: DOD Is Killing Us (& On So-Called Cuts To Killer Spending/ers)

Debt, Economy, Military, Republicans, War

When the need to slash the military is raised, Republicans typically counter that their beloved Department of Defense is a small-ticket item. Blame Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

He who admits half the truth is still a wholesale liar. The DOD is a budgetary killer.

Via Fox News’ Bret Baier:

Each day during the month of November, the government brought in a little more than $5 billion of revenue. That’s a lot of money – but the U.S. government spent in that time more than $11 billion a day. The difference is roughly $6 billion.
Of that $11 billion, the top items were as follows: The Department of Health and Human Services, which goes through roughly $3 billion a day; Social Security, which shells out roughly $2.5 billion a day; the Department of Defense, which runs a $1.8 billion daily tab; and interest on the debt, which eats up $854 million every day.

MORE.

UPDATE (19/12/012): Finally, Republicans, and a couple of Democrats and their anointed experts, are framing all budget proposals out there as they should—and as these worse-than-useless efforts are habitually framed by libertarians (led by Ron Paul): “cuts to designated increases in spending.”

Bret Baier (archived here) has been tackling the structure of the debt:

At last check, it was approaching $16.4 trillion. Just four years ago, it was $10.6 trillion.
The skyrocketing number is, to say the least, reason for concern for every American.
Here’s why:
As of today, every household in the United States owes about $140,000 of this debt.
The country is borrowing roughly $6 billion every day, and $239 million every hour. Put another way, that’s $4 million every minute.
The country runs up so much debt for a fairly basic reason — it spends far more than it takes in. This year, for every dollar in revenue the federal government brought in, it spent two dollars and six cents. That shortfall over the course of the year adds up to the annual deficit. The national debt — or total accumulated debt — is the sum of all annual deficits, minus any surpluses. …

Jack Kerwick Against ‘Conservatives’ For Gargantuan Government

Conservatism, Democrats, Republicans, The Zeitgeist

“Major media feeds on mediocrity,” I wrote in “Just Another Mouth in the Republican Fellatio Machine.” Wanna get a gig in Sodom and Gomorrah? Having boobs and no brains (like Margaret Hoover, Gretchen Carlson, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Krystal Ball, Noelle Nikpour, Dana Perino, and S. E. Cupp) goes a long way.

Otherwise, you will have to learn to parrot one of the party-lines.

Jack Kerwick, of The New American, refuses to play the game:

Throughout the first six years of his presidency, George W. Bush’s Republican Party held strong majorities in both chambers of Congress. Thanks to his policies, and his disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan particularly, the Democrats not only defeated the Republicans in 2006 and 2008, the former actually gained super majorities in the House and the Senate. Bush retired from his second term with a 30-percent approval rating.
Yet no sooner was Bush II on the road back to Crawford, Texas than “the Architect” of the GOP’s defeat — Karl Rove — as well as other Bush lackeys, such as Dana Perino, were signing their contracts to become regulars on Fox News. It is there that such stalwart “conservatives” as Sean Hannity, who daily beats the drums about the Democrats’ exorbitant spending, routinely consults Rove and Perino, accomplices to Bush’s exorbitant spending, for counsel on how to frustrate the Democrats’ exorbitant spending.
It is on Fox that the likes of Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer continue to be treated as bottomless fonts of wisdom in spite of their spectacularly checkered track records on all manner of topics. From the Middle Eastern wars within which we remain mired to the presidential nominations of McCain and Mitt Romney to amnesty for the millions of Third World immigrants who are transforming the character of America, Kristol and Krauthammer have been almost shockingly wrong.
There are numerous other instances that could be cited to show that “the conservative movement” has, by and large, been taken over by fame-seekers of one sort or other. The most recent of which I’m aware is that of World Net Daily.
WorldNetDaily is a popular “conservative” website whose editor, Joseph Farrah, has rightly ripped into Karl Rove for the faux conservative that he is. Yet Farrah just hired former Pennsylvania senator and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum as a regular contributor to WND.
Now, Santorum is about as conservative as Rove. Indeed, if there is any significant difference between the one and the other, or between Santorum and our last president, whose “brain” we are forever told was none other than Mr. Rove himself, I have yet to discover what it could be.
Santorum not only supports “socialized medicine” — i.e., Medicare and Medicaid — but in voting for Medicare Part D, a prescription drug benefit that marked the largest expansion in Medicare since its inception, Santorum actually strengthened socialized medicine while paving the way for ObamaCare.
This former Pennsylvania senator, who enjoys the distinction of having lost his bid for reelection by a larger margin than any senator in the Keystone state’s history, advocates not just “big,” but Gargantuan Government. That Santorum actually wants to increase our troop presence in countries around the world (the 160 or so countries where we currently have troops stationed isn’t sufficient I guess) shows that his foreign policy vision is even more ambitious than that of Bush’s.

Excerpted from “Fame, Fortune, and “the Conservative Movement.”

The only thing about Santorum that is more repulsive than his politics is his constant schmaltzy milking of his daughter’s condition. A cultural conservative, first and foremost, separates his private from his public life and keeps his emotions in check. (Like Romney did. Mitt Romney relented and spoke about his trials, tribulations and good works only when public pressure mounted for him to weep and wobble like a woman.)

Walk Like An Egyptian

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democracy, Democrats, Government, Liberty, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Republicans, The State

“This just in: The Secret Service backed by the District of Columbia Police Department is battling thousands of protesters outside President Barack Obama’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue ‘palace,’ prompting the socialist ‘leader to leave the building. Officers fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Obama’s November … decree that expanded his powers. ‘The people want the downfall of the regime,’ the demonstrators chant. ‘Our marches are against tyranny and the constitutional … decree, and we won’t retract our position until our demands are met.'”

The excerpt was from “Walk Like an Egyptian,” the current column. Read more about “the competing realities presented” by an apoplectic press with “a stars-and-stripes bias,” and my hope that Americans act more like Egyptians.

Receive the weekly column in your email. Scroll down the page to sign-up for it on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION, AND DO BATTLE FOR LIBERTY BY:

• Using the content-sharing icons on Barely a Blog posts.

• At the WND and RT Comments Sections, and on Facebook.

• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” WND’s “Return To Reason” , and RT’s “Paleolibertarian Column.”