One of the reasons why the conservative vote is split is not because the Reagan coalition has gone away.

You have basically three legs of the conservative stool. There’s subsets of this, but you’ve got the economic, the fiscal; you’ve got the social; and you got the foreign policy conservatives.

Among these foreign policy conservatives — these are the neocon guys — they believe in a big government. They believe in big, active executive, compassionate conservatism. They love this.

That’s why they like McCain. He’s a big government guy.

Without anybody in this race that has all three of those legs firmly understood, then the conservatives all over these states and all these primaries are splitting off one of those three legs. Like the social conservatives, a lot of them are going Huckabee because he’s a minister, because of abortion. The economic conservatives, a lot of people are going to Romney — and those are the small government types. The foreign policy national security conservatives, those are the most important ones, those are the ones going to McCain.

Of course, he’s picking up independents and moderates as well, and so the reason for this fracture is because there’s not one candidate that incorporates all three legs of the stool.

You look for the best of the options. Whoever is the last standing in this race is going to be the one that we dislike the least.

It’s just as simple as that.

You have to fight for what you believe.

This fight never ends because liberalism is never going away, and there are always going to be Republicans who are not conservative, and there are always going to be Republicans who are moderates and so forth. But all of these things are all part of the mix. The disappointment of the Republican Party or a large portion of it was palpable when Reagan lost in that convention and Gerald Ford won. Ford was a likable guy. There wasn’t a lot of animus to Ford. He was just an establishment guy. He wasn’t conservative. Reagan was where the future was. Reagan was excitement. Everybody wanted the future now. We had to wait four years — and, arguably, Carter.

You could say that Jimmy Carter played a large role in so wrecking the country, in so destroying it. You talk about being humiliated and embarrassed in the world? Nobody’s done a better job of that for this country than Jimmy Carter! So it may well be that a President McCain or a President Hillary is what it takes to forge a conservative candidate who incorporates all three legs of our stool.

Get this. It’s unbelievable… especially from the Associated Press.

“Luxury Squeeze — It’s hard to feel sorry for well-heeled shoppers whose idea of tough economic times is passing on $1,000 Burberry raincoats or that $300 limo ride while the working poor skimp on vegetables and take the bus. But economists say that recent signs of cutting back by the affluent could hurt the US economy and deliver even more pain to lower-income workers, who are dependent on their business and fat tips. Nathan Warren, a limo driver, knows this firsthand: He has seen his monthly wages drop by 40 percent to about $1,800 since late last year. His work week at Classy Ride Limousine Service was reduced to three days from five amid slow business. ‘I have to struggle to get by. I am pinching pennies,’ said Warren, 30, a Costa Mesa, Calif. resident. ‘I am eating more cereal and am not buying clothing.’ Cutbacks by the wealthy have a ripple effect across all consumer spending, said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. That’s because American households in the top 20 percent by income — those making at least $150,000 a year — account for about 40 percent of overall consumer spending, which makes up two-thirds of economic activity.”

Why? Why?

Wait, wait, wait! Ripple effect?

You mean when the affluent and wealthy stop buying, it hurts people lower down the scale?

Uh, so you got… Follow me on this here, folks.

You got the wealthy and you got the affluent up here, and they spend, and when they spend, that spending sort of “trickles down” to others below them. Uh, so there is a trickle-down effect?

A trickle-down effect!

So when you give tax relief, tax cuts to upper income workers, they spend more, and there’s a trickle-down effect? Does this woman who wrote this, Anne Dinnocenzio, want to keep her job? She has just done a story under the guise of feeling sorry for the poor and the middle class that they’re having to eat cereal and go without new clothes — and she just validated Reaganomics, the trickle-down aspect.

So, the rich can’t win. If they make too much money, it’s not fair. If they don’t spend what they make, everybody suffers (Women and Minorities Hardest Hit). This needs to be framed and put in the Smithsonian.

This is incredible.

“Recent signs of cutting back by the affluent could hurt the economy and deliver even more pain to lower income workers who are dependent on their business. The limo driver is just but one example.”

Really? Go figure…

It has been advanced in conservative quarters that the argument over manmade global warming is lost; that the majority of the country accepts that it’s happening, and therefore we conservatives should abandon the efforts to argue the premise and persuade people that they’re being lied to and that they’re being hoaxed. So we gotta accept the premise because they do, and then come up with better solutions.

Here’s the problem with that, on this issue and a whole lot of others, but specifically to this issue. What, of all of the tenets of the hoax of manmade global warming, is the number-one culprit?

Fossil fuels. Oil!

Specifically oil, and then consulting from that, “the carbon footprint” — and then, of course, after that, then who uses more than everybody else?

Us! So the United States is third or fourth on the primary problem but in order to blame the US you have to first find something else to blame, and in this case it’s oil. Fossil fuels.

If you doubt me — ask yourself a question:

“Why is everybody running around with these, maybe well-intentioned, but utterly misguided efforts to replace oil with what are the equivalent of rubber bands?“

Hybrid cars, windmills, biofuels.
It’s time for a little dose of reality!

The fuel of the engine of economic growth and freedom worldwide, is oil!

O-I-L.

And it will remain so for as far into the future as you can imagine. Brazil. Huge oil field found off Brazil. Mexico, ditto. The Chinese are drilling off the coast of Cuba with the Cubans. We can’t.

“But, there’s a security problem. We can’t depend on so much foreign oil.”

Okay. There is a little security issue here, but I think even that is being hyped.

Of the oil we import, how much we get from the Middle East? Thirty-three percent. The vast majority of our imported oil comes from friends. It comes from Canada, comes from Mexico. Now, I think all of government is hyping the security issue because energy companies want it hyped because energy companies think that there’s money in going green, because, so many Americans have bought into it.

So they manufacture a product, a car, whatever, and it’s energy efficient. “Wow, this company cares! I love this company. I want to buy this product.” Yipee… Of course, what big-time contributors want they usually get from the lobbyists and elected officials in Washington. Despite the pipe dreams, ours is a world that runs on oil. It always will.

“The coal plants are polluting the skies! They’re destroying the country. They’re destroying the world. We gotta eliminate coal.”

Fine. There’s one way to eliminate coal: nuclear power plants.

“We can’t go nuclear! Did you see The China Syndrome?”

Right. We’re not going to go nuclear because of a Jane Fonda movie! The very people demanding that we go independent are denying our right and ability to do it — the environmentalist and the Democrat Party.

Not only do we import 65% of our oil, do you know that we import 13% of our refined gasoline now? Thirteen percentage of all gasoline is imported, because we don’t have the refining capacity to handle it ourselves. Security, anybody? No new refineries in 30 years? We can’t drill in the Gulf. The Chinese and the Cubans can. The Mexicans can. The Brazilians can, but we can’t.

We can’t drill in a truly desolate, moonscape place like ANWR because of the environmentalists.

So our security issues, folks, are self-imposed. But our security issues do not result from our use of too much energy. We are a growth people. We are a growth economy. The American people expect it, otherwise they wouldn’t panic over recessions. They expect us to grow. They expect this economy to continue to provide higher wages, better products, and more opportunity.

The world demands this. The world demands that we lead economically.

Look at the stock markets last week around the world. When we were closed, they tanked. It wasn’t ’til our Federal Reserve got into gear with some fixes here on the interest rates and everything got stabilized. We are the economic stability of the entire world!

We need more energy, not less — and, sorry, folks: biofuels, windmills, hybrid cars, new lightbulbs, are a drop in the ocean. Those are all conservation oriented, and that’s fine, but that doesn’t create growth.

And that, folks, is why I cannot accept the premise of global warming based on a hoax and based on false promises as well, and yet propose better solutions. The one solution, the primary solution the hoaxers are proposing is to eliminate oil and fossil fuels.

Well, it’s not possible. It isn’t going to happen.

And if it did, your life and mine would cease to exist as we know it. We simply cannot grow; we simply cannot live; we simply cannot exist; we simply cannot advance as we have been.

Folks, go back and look at the twentieth century. The twentieth century, compared to all the previous centuries of mankind, it’s not comparable the advance, the inventions, the technology, phone, airplane, the jet engine, space travel, computers, the list is so long. I couldn’t list them even if I could remember them all. You go back to the nineteenth century and look at the progress, the eighteenth, diddly-squat. What do you think one of the key elements was?

Discovery of oil might have anything to do with it, ladies and gentlemen? The invention of the automobile might have anything to do with it?

Now they want us to go back to the horse-and-buggy days with horse manure in the streets. The point is that people are being lied to and led down the primrose path on a hoax. And you add to this what I just said about these people who think that we in the United States are the problem.

We have too much energy, we steal too much of the world’s energy, and we oppress people around the world, and that’s instability. Our power makes the Chinese want to have nukes, and the Iranians want to have nukes. “We need to resource our power. We’re causing the biggest threat in the face of the history of the earth.”

The oppressed people of the world want to get here. The people who live here want an improved quality of life every year. You know how I know this? I know this because I see it.

I don’t search for the deeper meaning of reality. Reality is enough for me. You start searching for the deeper meaning of reality and you’re going to end up such a head case.

We need growth — economic, political, energetic — all these things to provide the opportunity that America has always provided. This growth is led and must continue to be led by energy production and creation. Not until we found something better than oil at what it does should we get rid of it. Would you get rid of your current Lexus or your Cadillac for a 1930s Packard? Would you get rid of it for a Model T as your primary car?

The free flow of oil, not ethanol, the free flow of oil, not windmills, the free flow of oil, not solar panels, the free flow of oil at market prices is the fuel of the engine of freedom and democracy. The next time you’re at a sporting event and there’s a flyby of military jets at about 500 feet above where you’re sitting, when you hear that roar go by and you look up and you see what’s producing that roar, understand that oil is producing that roar, refined as kerosene, Jet A, American ingenuity in inventing the jet plane and all that, but understand that the noise you hear in that flyby is the sound of your freedom.

Story: “Five Myths About Energy Independence.” It’s from the Washington Post on January 23rd. It’s an op-ed piece. It’s by Robert Bryce, and he is a fellow at the Institute for Energy Research.

He is the author of the forthcoming Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence. Here are the five myths that he tackles.

“Energy independence will reduce or eliminate terrorism.” False.
“A big push for alternative fuels will break our oil addiction.” False.

Illustration — “The new energy bill requires that the country produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. That sounds like a lot of fuel, but put it in perspective: The United States uses more than 320 billion gallons of oil per year, of which nearly 200 billion gallons are imported,” and they think 36 billion gallons of biofuels measured against 320 billion gallons of oil by the year 2022 is going to make a bit of difference. It won’t. So what’s the better idea than biofuels fuels if that’s the best idea that’s out there. And, by the way, what’s that doing to agricultural prices and the topsoil and so forth?

Myth number three: “Energy independence will let America choke off the flow of money to nasty countries.” False.

Myth four: “Energy independence will mean reform in the Muslim world.” False.

Number five: “Energy independence will mean a more secure US energy supply.” False.

“Think back to 2005. After hurricanes ravaged the Gulf Coast, chewing up refineries as they went, several cities in the southeastern United States were hit with gasoline shortages. Thankfully, they were short-lived. The reason? Imported gasoline, from refineries in Venezuela, the Netherlands and elsewhere.”

Global economy. Think global.

If you think that getting rid of fossil fuels is the way to save the planet… Yeah, well, go back to Oklahoma when they lost power for a week, subzero temperatures, subfreezing, ask them how they liked having no oil. That’s what it would be like…

Washington Post-5 Myths

CNN, after Obama has complained about it, has banned James Carville and Paul Begala from appearing on CNN as analysts until the primary is settled.

“They told Carville and Begala and Robert Zimmerman — who are CNN mainstays but are all Hillary supporters — that they will not be doing any more political analysis on the network until the Democratic primary has reached a conclusion.”

This is because “Obama repeatedly complained to high level officials” at the Clinton News Network “about the presence of Carville and Begala on the network.” Sam Feist, the Clinton News Network’s political director, “confirmed the decision. ‘As we got closer to the voting, we made a decision to make sure that all the analysts that are on are non-aligned,’ Feist said, adding that the decision had been made around the start of December. ‘Carville and Begala are two of the best analysts around and we look forward to seeing them on CNN plenty of times in the future, once the nominating process has ended.'”

“We’ll get ’em back here just in time to destroy the Republicans.”

Well, he didn’t say that — I just added that in there — but that’s what they mean at the Clinton News Network.

This is all from TalkingPointsMemo.com. By the way, “not everybody at CNN appears to agree with the decision.” Some people inside CNN are surprised. “One person involved with CNN programming said, ‘No other network buckled to this political pressure'” — Can you believe this?

No other network has been told to get rid of its libs and Clinton supporters?“How come we have to get rid of our Clinton supporters?”

— Yup: That’s what people inside CNN are whining about.

Mrs. Clinton… She was inevitable until she actually ran.

Everybody is so caught up in the Uncivil War and the entertainment factor here of Bill Clinton claiming that Obama interjected race and is putting hit jobs on him. But have you noticed what’s had to happen here?

I think one of the best ways to expose Hillary is to show how far she fell in the real world. Mrs. Clinton wasn’t the only one who thought she was inevitable. She actually was. The whole Democrat Party thought she was inevitable…

Until she ran.

She has the last name of a liberal icon — Clinton. She has a first name known around the world, Hillary. She has control of one of the most powerful national political machines in our history.

She is the most cheated on woman in the world.

She has the leading Democrat fundraiser.

She has the longest database of contributors, legal and illegal.

She was inevitable.

She was vacuuming up all of that money way before any of these other Democrats got in the race.

She has an army of battle-tested pollsters and spinners, investigators, hit men and hit women.

She has an under-the-radar gang of 527s with names that include the word “America” in them, like Media Matters for America, that really should be called Media Matters for Hillary. here are so many Hillary front groups out there. They’re actually 527s disguised as think tanks.

She was inevitable…

She even has a rigged primary calendar, a compressed primary schedule that favored the candidate with the greatest name recognition and money and also favored the candidate with the most to lose by going out there and opening her mouth all the time.

The more she speaks the more her numbers go down. So they compressed all of this so that by February 5th the race would be over. With all of that, from the money on down, to the machine, to the inevitability, all of the front groups, all the George Soros money, from all of that, look where we are.

She went from inevitable to not so inevitable, to maybe not inevitable, and now people are asking, “Whoever said she was inevitable?”

She did...

She was running on a coronation, and a lot of people bought into it.

I ask you this question.

— how did a woman connected by chromosome to more than half the electorate, who doesn’t have an experienced rival — don’t tell me Edwards, don’t tell me Obama. She does not have an experienced rival

— how did that woman go from inevitable, to down and dirty. Mrs. Clinton says that she bears the scars of her health care plan defeat.

The most cheated on woman in the world has emotional scars. This health care plan defeat, that was not a scar. That was an F, a failed grade, blew it big time; the same thing with handling the Paula Jones case; the same thing advising on other legal issues in the White House.

Her big success has actually been the 35 years of bimbo eruptions, ruining the reputations of the pretty girls that popped up and said that they had affairs with Bill Clinton, or warning the pretty girls who were going to pop up and say that they’d better not. The bimbo eruption operation, that was pretty successful out there.

So where did inevitable ever come from in the first place? They got it out there, plus she’s owed this.

As Charles Krauthammer said,

“This is one huge alimony check she is cashing,” a coronation for the presidency, an inevitable campaign.

I’m beginning to wonder, though, will Mrs. Clinton’s White House run be as big a failure as her health care plan?

Because I really want to know, how do you go from inevitable to people now asking whoever said she was inevitable? Well, she was inevitable and heading down that path to the coronation until one little grim reality got in the way, and that is she had to campaign…

Reference:

National Review: Real First Black President – Charles Krauthammer