After debuting in an Inside-the-Beltway pizza parlor last week, the new Congressional “National Council for a New America” reached outside the D.C. area to Sarah Palin, asking her to join the effort.
The NCNA got off to a rocky start when former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told those few non-Hill and GOP staffers who showed up for the pizza that it was time to leave the era of Ronald Reagan behind.
“You can't beat something with nothing, and the other side has something,” Bush said. “I don't like it, but they have it, and we have to be respectful and mindful of that.”
Gov. Bush seemed to be talking for the same Republican establishment that - going back to the days of New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller - has never been comfortable with Reaganite conservatism. Or, come to think of it, any other sort of conservatism.
The NCNA group, however, has a concatenation of moderate-to-conservative Republican members ranging from former presidential candidate John McCain to Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.). House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who organized the NCNA, falls on the conservative side of the equation.
Obama and his handlers understand just how important his liberal base really is to his success. While the GOP political elites continue their quest to silence, de-fund, chide and distance themselves from their conservative base, the handful of Soros-funded far-left groups, aided by their willing accomplices in the media, have provided the momentum and drive toward Obama’s European welfare state. (The U.S. of France?)
Obama’s revolutionaries are well down the road to two out of three victories this year by likely ramming through Congress nationalized healthcare as well as nationalized higher education. And they have a shot at shoving through a devastating national “cap and trade” carbon tax using budget reconciliation in the Senate this year as well. The small but very vocal far left has given Obama the political cover to push his socialist agenda through Congress while moving the line of moderation markedly to the left.
Whether he realizes it or not, a robust, healthy and well-funded base to drive policy is the “something” Jeb Bush laments that the Democrats have and the GOP is lacking. Reagan embraced the Republican conservative base because he was one of us and left a much healthier GOP in his wake. The two Bush administrations through sheer arrogance and ignorance threw away the conservative base with both hands, all the while mirroring the Democrats’ identity politics in search of a new base that could be bought with the taxpayer’s money. Democrat Lite.
Rush Limbaugh spoke last week on his radio program of the same sort of GOP insiders cabal that tried to paint Reagan’s articulation of our founding principles as nostalgic. Reagan’s tax cuts were deemed by his liberal primary opponent, George H.W. Bush, as “voodoo economics.”
“The Reagan tax cuts did not come from a listening tour,” Limbaugh said. “The Reagan tax cuts were not the result of somebody pitching a big tent. The Reagan tax cuts came about because of a commitment to a philosophy that gave birth to a policy. The philosophy behind the Reagan tax cuts is that people deserve to keep most of what they earn, and if you let them do that then they will go crazy earning. And people will hire other people because they'll have more money as their businesses take off. It does trickle down, it certainly does. As you release or lighten the burden on the job creators, they are able to create more jobs. This creates more taxpayers, a lower tax rate on everybody creates thus more tax revenue. This was not a policy that was devised as some trick to go out and get a certain segment of the voting public to elect Republicans. It was a philosophy born of the Constitution's and the Declaration of Independence's references to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. It was born of a belief in natural law. It was born of a philosophical belief that an oppressive, large government will choke off individual economic freedom, growth, and liberty. So we didn't have to build a big tent.”
This nation does owe George W. Bush a debt of gratitude for keeping us all safe for so many years after the 9/11 attacks. But the legacies of Lincoln and Reagan reign supreme in the Republican Party for good reason.
Conservatives in Congress Introduce New American Energy Innovation Act
As was detailed in a report in HUMAN EVENTS last week, the conservative House Republican Study Committee (RSC) introduced a new “all you can create” energy bill that they call the next step in energy solutions. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the RSC chairman and Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, led a press conference on Thursday to present the new bill to the public through the media.
As the bill’s chief sponsor, Bishop’s presentation offered a clear contrast of vision between conservatives who embrace an all-of-the-above strategy for the expansion of energy resources for American energy independence and the Democrat plan of a national energy “cap and trade” tax to curb usage by making energy unaffordable to both industries and individuals.
“We are talking about competing visions of the future and competing visions of where we go as a country when it deals with energy,” Bishop said. “It’s like the Robert Frost poem of the two roads in the woods that diverge. Each one will take you to an extremely different conclusion, and we have to decide which one we wish to go down.
“The Democrats have already given us an option on energy issues that will cost individuals up to $3,000 a year and it will not be done fairly across the board,” Bishop continued. “Some areas will be harmed more than others, but all will be harmed. The Republican road we want to take is one that actually grows our energy supply so that no one is harmed and, in fact, we have the chance to reduce the cost of energy.”
Bishop went on to explain that the Democrat national energy tax will cause the loss of over three million American jobs by the lowest estimates and would devastate industry. He warned that the Democrats would take us back to a time of long gas lines and federal government diktats on how fast you could drive your car and on which day you could fill your tank based on odd or even license plate number. Ah, the halcyon days of the Jimmy Carter Misery Index.
“Remember those sequels to Back to the Future where there were the two worlds?” Bishop concluded. “Our world is the one where the McFly family is happy. The Democrat version is the one where Biff runs everything. We have a better road for America.”
