I’ll use this as my own inauguration day, spending the day thinking about what we can do better.
I have not given in to all the doom and gloom, although it’s hard not to. There is a deliberate effort to declare the Republican Party, conservatives, and the Tea Party movement over. Operation Demoralize never stops.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have problems. Ignoring reality doesn’t help.
But it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.
As IBD points out, Obama’s number one priority is to take back the House by dividing Republicans against each other. But that will be easier said than done, as redistricting will make it very difficult for Democrats to take back the House. But it’s not impossible, so our priority has to be to hold the House.
There will be another Operation Counterweight, one focused perhaps more on protecting prior gains. All that stands between us and another disaster on a scale equivalent to Obamacare is the House. So as much as I disagree with the strategy and negotiating tactics used by John Boehner and others in the House, my focus will not be on tearing us apart.
Redistricting is a good example of how things are not as bad as they seem. Redistricting in favor of Republicans was the result of large gains made at the state level in prior years. That is the untold story, and also a path forward.
So long as Obama is President, political action at the federal level is damage control.
But at the state and local level we can, and have been, very effective. That will be a focus of the Legal Insurrection in the coming year — changing what we can change, protecting what we can protect, undermining what we can undermine, acting locally.
Part of that effort will be letting the nanny state fall of its own weight, while insulating ourselves, our loved ones, our compatriots, and to the extent possible, our nation, from the damage.
So consider today our own inauguration day.
Update: Just saw this at the Tumblr page of someone who just followed @collegeinsurrec:
Also, Ballotpedia has a wealth of information on how to use the local ballot initiative process including state by state guides and an online guide book which you can read for free.
San Diego had a successful local pension reform ballot initiative in 2012.
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Comments
Thanks for the uplifting post. I needed that.
Well said. The first step to success is to have a plan.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t have problems. Ignoring reality doesn’t help.
But it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.”
Then perhaps we need to step up our declarations to our friends and neighbors, and confront the kool-aid drinking head on. I’ve been silent around family, due to the biblical principle of “Not stirring up dissention” but I’m beginning to believe that the time for that has passed. Jesus came to pit “Brother against brother.” (Matthew 10:35)
Perhaps the time is coming to take stand, even when one’s own security may be at risk.
Yep. Start with your kids. Don’t let their teachers and professors “deconstruct” your teachings as a parent.
Our oldest daughter is in her last semester at USC and she is fine. She’s a full-on conservative Republican. I send her links to informative postings at LI, Hot Air, Powerline, Instapundit, etc.
My niece, while attendiing UCLA, started voting Democrat. After her husband finished his stint in the military, he started attending UCLA. They went to see John Kerry speak at UCLA and they voted for him against Bush.
My sister kept talking to them … she kept explaining conservative principles, kept countering what these younggins got from school, the media, pop culture, etc., and brought them back home. They are now both staunch Republicans (with their third baby due in three weeks).
So, first is family. Don’t let your kids grow up to be liberal Democrats.
Next would be relatives. Then friends. I work on low-information coworkers all the time. I got two wonderful hispanic ladies at work to vote Republican this last election for the first time in their lives. They’re both intelligent, lovely people, but they never paid attention to political issues and always just voted Democrat out of tradition.
Another good target community aka “low hanging fruit”: nursing homes, retirement communities, etc.
I have a relative at one of these. I gave a talk. Pointing out how Obamacare will affect them (= kill them off, but I didn’t say that).
These places bring the vote to them — ballots are carried in (at least at my local one). I hope I influenced some of the attendees.
It could be better with greater internal home publicity … visiting the residents who invite you or having a tea … being there when the ballots arrive. And it’s all good for the residents — they like to go to events.
Professor: I wish I could share your enthusiasm, especially with regards to change on the state and local level, but I don’t see it in either my New York or Rhode Island back yard. I’ve mentioned this before but in my NY home district a most excellent and capable Republican state senator was displaced by a carpetbagger, a Democrat who knew nothing of the district, didn’t even live here, but had a well oiled machine behind him, and a Bill Clinton endorsement.
You saw what happened in Rhode Island with David Cicilline. Different actors. Same lousy ending.
Please help me understand your vision. For now, my once very Republican eyes are totally out of focus for the future of the party I love.
eosredux: You asked Professor Jacobson to describe his “vision.” I’ll describe his “vision” for you. 1.Even though you have tenure at a well known University, don’t say anything about dispositive evidence that Obama is not
eligible to be President; speaking up will cost you readers
and invitations to faculty parties, so you keep silent. Besides all the other Conservative main stream commentators are also silent, so why stick your neck out, and chance that the other Conservative MSM Commentators might turn on you. 2. You are a lawyer and therefor you are an Officer of the Court. As an Officer of the Court,you have an absolute affirmative obligation to inform the Court that Obama is not a legal President; but that would also cost you readers and put a crimp in your MSM and social status, so you stay silent. 3. When a citizen (especially a lawyer-citizen) has knowledge of a crime and does not report it to law enforcement authorities,that citizen is likely committing “misprison of a felony,” which is a misdemeanor, punishable by up to three years in prison, but , hey, you don’t see any other lawyers doing it, so why should you?
It could really cost you. 4.You hide your spineless failure to remove an illigitimate President by criticizing everything else that Obama does, hoping nobody notices.5. Your readers would really benefit from knowing the truth about the entire Obama eligibility issue, but you and your carreer are better off if you let your readers stay in the dark.
Eosredux, I’ve outlined the beginning, middle, and end of Professor Jacobson’s vision for you. Thanks for asking.
You forgot the part about Professor Jacobson masterminding 9/11, faking the Apoolo moon landings, and riding back and forth to work in a black helicopter. He also got West Wing cancelled.
But mainly I forgot the part about how you and the Professor
are either too (purposely?) uninformed to understand what has happened (that’s you) or informed but too frightened and cowardly to inform others of what has happened (that’s the Professor.)
Dude, it’s obvious you’re a lefty trying to appear as a rightie for the purpose of making righties look like loons.
If I’m wrong, then you’re just plain scary.
LukeCoolHand (and what an inventive name it is), I know that you are one of the Professor’s favorite commentators and that you are allowed to stand within the shining circle of his reflected radiance; and that you, yourself, are almost as dazzling as the Professor as you join his Eminence in an enchanting duet of admiration for the Professor (which of you is the soprano?) But however loyal you are, you are both, in the end, Obama enablers– though not of equal value to Obama, I’m afraid. Obama highly values the Professor. The Professor is in a position to hide the truth by clouding the minds of thousands of readers; and while I’m sure you always do your best, Obama
values you…not so much; for Obama, you are just another
“useful idiot.”
After a while, everything looks like a conspiracy, and anyone who disagrees with that is part of it.
Button up. If the feds learn of your knowledge, well…. you know.
You know, you guys could try something new. Now that the President is term limited, you can spend a little less effort trying to beat him, and a little more effort making the rest of us think you’re worth voting for.
Rather than insisting on continuing to be obstructionist (“letting the nanny state fall of its own weight”), you might consider making yourselves out to be part of the rest of the country.
On the other hand, feel free to go have your own little party. Let me know if you’re having cake.
No cake.
But rest assured Your Obamic Overlords have a big plate of crap sandwiches to feed you.
Oh, and Kool-aide. Lucious, sickly sweet Koo-aide… All you can quaff, troll.
Let’s be honest, there are some states that are hopeless. Do a comparison study of some of the blue states vs. the thriving red states. Maybe the Democrats should try something new and not just raise taxes. The trouble with our side is we’ve given too much over the years and it has led to what we have now.
Thriving by what measure? Median household income? Per-capita income? Poverty rate? Let’s do a comparison.
You do it. Check out the states that have Republican governors vs. the tax-happy governors.
Give me a measure and I might.
” … you might consider making yourselves out to be part of the rest of the country.”
Yeah, you exclusionary fly-over-bitter-clinger nutcases!
Why … I think this is a grand idea!
Here’s my attempt to make myself out to be part of the rest of the country:
Dear Conservative-loathing mainstream media/university professors/Hollywood/journalists/union thugs/race-card dealing, war-on-women squealing, class-warfare mongers/and various hostile entitlement-mentality sponges,
Won’t you please like me? Have you hugged a conservative today?
Love, LukeHandCool
“On the other hand, feel free to go have your own little party. Let me know if you’re having cake.”
We’d like you to jump out of it. After all, we’re just a bunch of freaky wackos, remember?
See, I was being earnest. I’m a political moderate who’s currently doing business in China, so my life’s pretty hectic. I was unavoidably and unpredictably detained and so was unable to vote last November, and even in hindsight the only reason I can think of, personally, to vote one way or the other is that a vote for the incumbent over the challenger carried the prospect of greater Congressional stability, and saner government in light of the fact (as I mentioned) that President Obama would be term-limited, and therefore House and Senate Republicans would put a greater effort in making the case for whomever gets their 2016 bid than the House and Senate Democrats would put into defeating a President Romney in reelection. The instant hostility I receive here for failure to toe the wingnut line makes me think that I was wrong; that things are hopeless back home because you guys are just too crazy.
You’ve been blessed with a Democratic President who aimed for compromise, to his detriment within his party. Rather than spend the last four years trying to convince anyone that your ideas are better, you’ve wasted them making people feel like you’re enemies of a healthy, productive society.
From birtherism to opposition to the PPACA (a plan so liberal, after all, the guy who championed it before President Obama almost wasn’t the Republican Party’s nominee for President) to this inexplicable position on the debt ceiling, it is frankly mind-boggling to the rest of the world how you people can be your own worst enemies, even when I, relatively unthreatening, show up to your web forum and simply ask that you guys stay engaged with society as reasoned adults.
Had a liberal friend warned me that these were the kinds of responses I’d get, frankly, I wouldn’t have believed him or her. You guys are caricatures.
Issac, are you that ignorant, or are you that much of a fool to believe what you wrote? Or are you on the payroll?
I think I can speak for Isaac:
Yes, yes, and yes.
I can speak for Isaac too:
Did you want the combo?
Which part of what I wrote makes me traitorous? And which makes me a leech?
It’s like you guys aim to marginalize yourselves.
That was meant to go below.
Is it really foolish to believe that you need to compromise with the people you live with in a democratic republic? Or at least persuade enough people to agree with you so that you don’t need to compromise?
In order for your mindset to win elections (and thereby govern policy-making), a majority of the people voting have to share it. If you make no effort to reach out to people who don’t agree with you (and be humble enough to recognize that they’re equipped with much of the same biological thinkin-stuff that you’ve got), how on earth do you plan on reaching your desired result?
No thanks. This Puerto Rican/Texan doesn’t eat cake.
Especially coming from traitorous leeches like you.
Graduated from the tip line…
Another priceless offering from Bill Whittle…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txBmzY2II1E&feature=player_embedded
So…what sort of things does one do to “insulate” one’s self from what is to come?
I’m braced for 3 years of consequences that are too small in the national scheme of things to make headlines yet will affect even Obama voters to the point that they’ll wake up and at least listen to the Republicans in 2016.
First came the shock of layoffs as employers tried to keep their employee headcounts down before the numbers were used for Obamacare purposes in 2014.
Then there was the shock to Obama voters of finding hundreds of dollars a month missing from their paychecks because the payroll tax cut expired.
And now there’s this, which we can only hope spreads far and wide: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/278279-reports-colleges-cut-professors-hours-to-avoid-obamacare-mandate
Maybe we can collect these items in a running list of Unintended Consequences of an Obama Vote.
Our own biggest problem is we’re under attack by our own party.
The dividing up of the GOP occurred when Boehner was reelected and then went made a scorched earth backstabbing attack on conservatives in Congress. That really was a staggering blow to party unity. Considering his cluelessness and spinelessness ptherwise, we now face a two-front battle — one front against the hacks leading the party.
I have an answer for this: dump the leadership. Barring that, we’ll be campaigning like Romney: one hand tied behind our back. The stupidity of this situation — and the acceptance of it — overwhelms me.
I honestly think there has to be, in the near future, a total hostile takeover of the Republican Party. Take all the “dead wood” out to the burning pile and start fresh.
Look at all the books of rules and study every minutiae. And then, using all of those, get some tricks going and outmaneuver them. When they least expect it, they’re out to pasture, and you’re in charge.
Shall we start with Colin Powell who spent his time on air trashing Republicans, the Tea party, and anyone who does not kowtow to the Won? He certainly is good at parroting Dem talking points, perhaps he should really espouse them and change parties.
I’m beginning to suspect that Powell’s self ID as Republican has been a calculated career choice from the beginning, necessary under the administrations he served and now no longer needed.
The highly promoted idea that Obama’s first goal is to destroy the GOP is a fake. If anything, it’s to help the “poor” GOP, so they can say to the grassroots, see you have to keep quiet when we give Obama everything he wants because he’s trying to divide us. It started right after the election and sounded to me like it was fed from the RNC. The GOP has long since been destroyed by the Bush crowd. Bush crowd cronies today are on Fox News to make sure the grassroots never gets a voice. The GOP has started a new PAC for the 2014 primaries to defeat grassroots candidates. It will fund “Democrats and Republicans who believe in compromise.” The Tea Party can’t have a voice now because of the fake GOP front groups, such as TheTeaParty.net. Fox News renewed Karl Rove for 4 years which is the final nail in the coffin. Third party is the only choice left.
Unless and until actual Conservatives run the Republican party, we’re screwed. I hate RINOs!!!
And above all we gotta remember were not exactly alone. Forget the pilot fish media and their treating Obama like the second coming. Guess what. He has fairly low approval numbers so dont be convinced he can actually walk on water.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159965/obama-averages-approval-first-term.aspx
lol @ “pilot fish media”. Good’n. Consider it stolen.
I was mistakenly thinking of pilot whales when I read “pilot fish.”
Now I get it!
But Obama is the kind of arrogant, dismissive shark who would eat his own pilot fish.
^^Cheers Henry its yours. LOL
What I have noticed about ballot initiatives in my own state is that they are very well organized by some special interest group impassioned by the cause. They use zealots as volunteers to get the necessary signatures on petitions to get it on the ballot – often targeted for voting in an off year or special election when turnout is small.
For example, I’ve mentioned the Kansas City “zoo tax” before. It’s an immaterial 1/8 cent sales tax. I opposed it on principle. My view is that if the zoo can not sustain itself by charging those who actually use it admission fees, parking fees, concessions, whatever, which is supplemented by by charitable donations from rich do-gooders, then why should the people who never visit the zoo pay for it? I may have been persuaded to vote for it if it had been temporary – say the tax were required by statute to expire after 5 or 10 years to get them well beyond the Great Recession. But the proposal had no “sunset” provision. It is now a new tax to be levied on residents until the sun burns out. The population of the two counties subjected to it is about 900,000 people. Only 60,000 or so voters decided to vote when it was on the ballot. So we have less than 40,000 who voted for it able to permanently raise taxes on the 900,000 or so people who live in the jurisdictions. And you can be sure that most of those 40,000 were employees and families of the zoo, vendors to the zoo and their families, those with businesses in the general vicinity of the zoo who stand to benefit from zoo traffic, etc.
But the ballot initiative that takes the cake happened in November. We’ve had rail/streetcar proposals on the ballot often. They always fail. This time the special interests were ingenious. They got a $100 million bond issue for a new two mile streetcar line in downtown Kansas City passed. To get it passed, they established a brand new tax district/authority. Only those who live in that special district were allowed to vote. And to vote, you had to request by mail a special ballot. Almost all those who requested ballots and live in the district are renters in their 20s who will move to the burbs in a few years to start families. Less than 600 voters decided the issue. Repeat. Less than 600 people voted. The streetcar will be “free” to ride. The people who voted for it voted to raise the property taxes of businesses in the district. Many of the owners of those businesses live elsewhere and were not allowed to vote. Estimates are commercial and residential rents will rise at least 10% to comensate for the increased property tax rates. There’s also a new 1% sales tax for business conducted in the district. Almost immediately after it passed, there were calls made for a broader, county-wide transit tax to spread the burden – which of course was the unspoken strategy of the supporters of the project all along. If history is a guide, it will be riddled with cost overruns and come in no where near budget. Those of us who live outside the special district and will never ride or benefit from the streetcar boondoggle will be forced to cough up for a project we did not want and would have voted against had we been given the opportunity, as we have done repeatedly in the past.
It was really one of the most un-democratic exercises I’ve ever seen. Less than 400 mostly 20-something yuppies voted for the bond issue. The vast majority of whom are renters and will be living in subdivisions in a few years and not subject to the taxes they voted to raise on others.
And this is a state where Romney beat Obama by more than 10 points. We have to get better at promoting ballot initiatives we like and defeating the ones that violate our principles. The collectivist-statists and special interests are way ahead of us.
“So as much as I disagree with the strategy and negotiating tactics used by John Boehner and others in the House, my focus will not be on tearing us apart.”
Thank you for taking the 3,000 feet view.
I never had a problem with the interdenominational strife that comes from the competing sectarian claim on the ‘Republican’ brand. Our plurality of positions (e.g., on so-called ‘social issues’) is a testament that the ‘Party’ of individualism is indeed peopled by thinking individuals; unlike the borg-like conformity of the Left.
We must recognize that there is a common threat to the individual, economic and religious liberty of theists, deists, secularists and atheists alike.
Well, since we’re being optimistic, the hyperinflation that’s sure to result from O’s massive increase in the money supply will likely happen during Obama’s 2nd term, so D’s won’t be able to blame it on Romney (well, they’ll still try to blame R’s).
Here:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s%5B1%5D%5Bid%5D=AMBNS
The pause at the top is just for ‘operation twist’ (the Treasury selling all its assets to pay for spending rather than selling bond to the fed for freshly printed money).
But, don’t worry, they’re back to printing money: $85 billion a month now, split evenly between buying new debt (100% of it!!) and buying mortgage backed securities from Fannie/Freddie (yeah, they learned NOTHING from the housing bubble collapse in ’07).
“Helicopter Ben” Bernanke can now officially be renamed “Zimbabwe Ben”. Weimar Republic here we come!
Wait, optimism. Right! We might win some elections as a result of the total collapse of the dollar, and then of the economy, that Obama has engineered. Woohoo!
Argentina here we come. I remember friends telling me that during their hyperinflation stores would not post prices, because they knew what the price was when a customer came in, but didn’t know what the price would be when that customer got ready to pay! Barter did well in those days.
The TEA Partiers should go big. They should set their sights on taking over BOTH the Democratic and the Republican parties.
A few thousand letters to Democratic legislators that say “I am a Democrat, and I support the TEA Party platform, http://www.teaparty-platform.com
because government policies of fiscal responsibility and individual freedom are essential to securing the general welfare of my much-loved country” would get their attention.
I don’t see the TEA Parties as a Republican phenomenon, at all. To me, the TEA Parties get significant support from Democratic voters who recognize that the Democratic Party at the national level is in the hands of cranks at the moment.
The characterization of the TEA Parties as the “base of the Republican Party” and as “extremist” all comes from Democratic partisans shaking in their shoes over the cold realization that they could lose their jobs over this, if the democratic voters and the republican voters in the big middle ever decide to link up.
Also, in the deep blue states, such as California and Maryland, the Democratic Party is the only option.