The Patriot Post Brief 08-21

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-21

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THE FOUNDATION

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”  - James Madison

THE GIPPER

“We are currently in the midst of a re-ordering of the political realities that have shaped our time. We know today that the principles and values that lie at the heart of conservatism are shared by the majority. Despite what some in the press may say, we who are proud to call ourselves ‘conservative’ are not a minority of a minority party; we are part of the great majority of Americans of both major parties and of most of the independents as well.”  - Ronald Reagan

FOR THE RECORD

“The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, ‘Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi.’ It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid - detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in ‘78 or ‘82 or ‘94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now... They are also - Hill leaders, lobbyists, party speakers - successful, well-connected, busy and rich. They never guessed, back in ‘86, how government would pay off! They didn’t know they’d stay! They came to make a difference and wound up with their butts in the butter. But affluence detaches, and in time skews thinking. It gives you the illusion you’re safe, and that everyone else is. A party can lose its gut this way. ... ‘This was a real wakeup call for us,’ someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. ‘We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.’ And those issues would be? ‘We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,’ he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.”  - Peggy Noonan

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Six ways the GOP can save itself: Things are so ugly for the members of the GOP right now, it’s worth pondering their political mortality. Put bluntly, can this party be saved? We talked to some of the smartest minds in Republican politics, and their prognosis is pretty grim. What follows are the composite views of key Republicans we interviewed. 1. Get a clue: ‘Take on health care in a way that focuses on consumer-driven health,’ providing ‘a contrast to the big government of Democrats,’ says former Senate majority leader Bill Frist. 2. Cut the crap: ‘The congressional leadership needs to be very proactive in addressing anything with a potential whiff of scandal forthrightly and immediately and with dispatch,’ says former White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein. 3. Beg for help: ‘There is an entire infrastructure that needs to be thought through, and it seems to me no one is interested in building that,’ said former Rep. J.C. Watts. 4. Burn the Bush: ‘We can go our own way with our own programs, and even disassociate ourselves from President Bush,’ says Rep. Tom Davis 5. Change the pitch - and your face: ‘Our reforms and beliefs need to be framed in the context of how they help families. A family-friendly focus is really important, given the angst that people feel these days,’ says Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. 6. Fan the fear: Ignore the critics, Republican wise men say - there is still no better way to win than to stir up concerns about Democratic patriotism and their commitment to national security and killing terrorists. It often remains the best call in the GOP playbook, especially with McCain atop the ticket.”  - Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen

SELECT READER COMMENTS

(Our servers automatically delete “Reply” messages to this e-mail. To submit or to view reader comments visit our Reader Comments page. Join the debate at the Patriot Blog.)

“Mark Alexander is to be commended for his essay, ’Memo to Republicans: Take a cue and get a clue!’, which continues to state the need for basic conservative principles. Even in solid Republican districts like mine, we have a primary battle between the incumbent Republican and a challenger, largely over the earmark issue. Hopefully the RNC will heed the warnings.”  - Johnson City, Tennessee

“’Take a cue and get a clue.’ Thank you for stating so well, in one place, all the frustration I feel. I especially like the advice to Republicans to ‘Just Do It.’ That is the only thing that would make me support them now.”  - Montrose, Colorado

“Sad to say, even if the GOP ‘leaders’ try to re-brand themselves, who will believe that they will do what they said they would do? They say they stand for smaller government, less pork, etc. HA! Until they PROVE they will follow conservative principals, why should we donate to the cause, just to be betrayed yet again?”  - Perry, Georgia
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The Patriot Post Brief 08-21

FREE E-mail Subscription:  http://FederalistPatriot.US/subscribe/
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OPINION IN BRIEF

“Today’s most widely accepted political belief is that because an unprecedentedly high percentage of Americans - 81 percent - believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, the Republicans are headed for a major defeat this coming November. If this is the case, it can only be because the American voter translates ‘headed in the wrong direction’ as ‘because the Republicans have had their way, so it’s time to let the Democrats have theirs.’ That should not be the case. I count myself as one of the 81 percent who believes America is headed in the wrong direction, and that is precisely why I am voting Republican. Moreover, I suspect I am not alone among the 81 percent in ascribing the wrong track to the leftist, not the conservative, influence on American life. ... Perhaps most of the 81 percent think that ‘wrong direction’ means, among many other things, the following: Forty years of left-wing control of the news media, of Hollywood, of the public schools, of the universities and of nearly every big city government have nearly ruined those institutions. Forty years of a litigation explosion has had terrible social and economic effects... Multiculturalism is destroying the concept of an American culture and people. Obama and the Democrats even opposed declaring English as America’s national language. So 81 percent of Americans are right. We are on the wrong track. But the future of America entirely depends on what track it is most Americans think is wrong.”  - Dennis Prager

FAMILY

“In Thursday’s 4-3 decision legalizing same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court stripped children of the right to be raised by a mother and a father. Most of the media coverage of the California Supreme Court’s decision has focused on the court’s declaration that there is a right to same-sex marriage. The ruling invalidated California’s Proposition 22, a state ballot initiative that passed with 61 percent of the vote in 2000, and which banned same-sex marriage in the state. But the California Supreme Court decision goes beyond simply giving same-sex couples the right to call their unions a ‘marriage.’ It also strips children of the right not to be artificially conceived or adopted by people other than a mother and a father. Indeed, the court does not recognize that children have any right whatsoever to a mother and a father. In the decision, the California court sees children primarily through the eyes of same-sex couples who want to secure custody and control of children. The court makes emphatically clear that it deems this to be a right of same-sex couples that is equal to - and identical to - the right of married mothers and fathers to adopt or conceive and raise their own children. In making this argument, the court addresses biological parenthood as an accident of nature that can be swept aside by the court in its pursuit of what the court understands to be justice.”  - Terrence Jeffrey

LIBERTY

“Is a law presumed constitutional merely because elected officials enacted it? ‘If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell,’ declared Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a staunch advocate of judicial restraint, ‘I will help them. It’s my job.’ It was a clever remark - but a poor recipe for sustaining the Framers’ system of checks and balances, or defending important liberty interests against political encroachment... To be sure, liberal judicial activism untethered to constitutional limits has been a serious blight on the legal landscape. But judicial passivism has wrought grave harm too.”  - Jeff Jacoby

CULTURE

“[The left] wants and needs man-made Global Warming as a way to counter what it considers the most potent threats to its agenda - faith and family. The left must have its scapegoat. This is absolutely essential. For Marx it was the bourgeoisie. For the ‘60s New Left, it was America  - spelled with a ‘k.’ White males are the villains of multiculturalism. Now, it’s babies and retrograde churches that are destroying the planet. The environment has assumed the role of the proletariat, the Third World and racial minorities in earlier models of damnation and salvation. In particular, the left cringes at the thought of Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox Jews and Mormons having lots of children - passing their misogynistic, homophobic, species-centric, suicidally archaic worldview to the next generation. The left has always worried about the reproductive patterns of certain people. As Jonah Goldberg explains... from the beginning, racial eugenics was a project of the left - or progressives, as they called themselves then and now. H.G. Wells, a hero of pre-World War II progressivism (a socialist who wrote science fiction, much like Al Gore), said that in order for humankind to move to the sunny uplands of utopia, ‘swarms of black and brown, and dirty (lower class) white and yellow people’ would have to be discouraged from breeding  - or physically eliminated. Moreover, Goldberg explains, ‘The foremost institution combating eugenics around the world was the Catholic Church.’ For those like Oliver ‘Buzz’ Thomas... hordes of rapidly multiplying Catholics, Mormons, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews have taken the place of ‘swarms of black and brown, and dirty white and yellow peoples.’ The irony here is that, unlike Global Warming, rapidly declining birthrates is a reality, not a theory.”  - Don Feder
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[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Brief 08-21

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GOVERNMENT

“Since the 1788 election that produced (unopposed) George Washington as the first president, the agenda for presidential elections has been narrowed to one underlying issue: the role of government. Understood in that fashion, the following 220 years of American history can be read as if with Superman’s X-ray vision. From slavery to abortion, the War of 1812 to the War in Iraq, from Lincoln’s support for ‘internal improvements’ to John McCain’s disdain for congressional earmarks, the question at issue was the role of government. Whether dealing with the isolationism of Washington or Robert Taft or Ron Paul instead of the internationalism of Jefferson’s chase after the Barbary pirates, Wilson’s League of Nations or Ronald Reagan’s determination to win the Cold War, the underlying question every time was the role of government. This can be expressed in terms of its size (big or small), of its engagement with the world (the kind and quality of diplomacy) and its ability to protect American citizens (do we do it here or over there?). Yet always the issue is exactly the same. It is the underlying skeleton and vital organs of every question of policy facing the American people.”  - Jeffrey Lord

RE: THE LEFT

“Supply and demand will never replace ‘need’ and ‘greed’ in political discussions of economic issues. ... One of the many ironies of politics is that those politicians who do the most to reduce supply often express the greatest outrage about high prices. So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it. Make a list of those politicians who do the most to prevent our drilling for our own oil. Then make a list of those politicians who express the most outrage about the high price of gasoline. Don’t be surprised if you see the same names on both lists. Make a list of those politicians who most loudly lament the lack of ‘affordable housing.’ Then make a list of those politicians who have most consistently promoted restrictions on the building of housing, under the banner of ‘open space’ laws, ‘farmland protection’ policies, preventing ‘urban sprawl,’ and other politically soothing phrases. Again, do not be surprised at seeing the same folks on both lists... So long as voters prefer heroes and villains to supply and demand, this game will continue to be played.”  - Thomas Sowell

THE LAST WORD

“Readers... will recall that from time to time in covering an election cycle I have referred to a voting bloc that political analysts of more delicate sensibilities would rather not mention, to wit, the moron vote. It is a constituency composed of politically ignorant citizens who nonetheless feel very intensely about political issues once their respective demagogues have notified them of the issues, suitably transmogrified. The moron vote’s rank and file might, in point of fact, not be morons at all. Some might be marine biologists or interior decorators or professors of romance languages, and in their chosen field they might be very knowledgeable. Yet when it comes to politics they are in the dark. They are very angry but still in the dark. We can all feel superior to these poor souls, if we are bereft of charity, but we might also feel a twinge of compassion for them. After all, they are not totally to blame for their ignorance. Most have been misled by their political messiahs, or should I say by their seducers? The fact is that in many elections clever politicians shamelessly prey on their supporters’ insecurities and the gaps in their political knowledge.”  - Emmett Tyrrell

Veritas vos Liberabit - Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families - especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)