Why are the Republican Leaders Silent?

An eve of Election Day message from Richard A. Viguerie

In the closing weeks of this election, I've been disappointed by the lack of a clear, strong message by Republicans, summarizing the meaning of this election.

In October, President Obama has been in the news explaining daily his side of what a Republican victory would mean for America. But the national GOP voice in reply has ranged from silence to a whisper, almost as if they were keeping their vision and plans secret -- or really don't have one worth telling after all.

Of course, there was the Pledge to America, which was unveiled on September 23 and quickly forgotten.

Yesterday, however, Sarah Palin presented a strong and articulate case for Republicans in a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace. But I doubt more than 1 or 2 million people heard her on a Sunday afternoon.

Republicans never win elections unless the elections are nationalized. GOP candidates and committees have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the closing months of this campaign, but it has been spent almost entirely on individual races.

If 2% of that money had been spent on national TV summarizing the core issues in this election, many more state legislators, House, Senate, and Governor races would have been won by the GOP.

However, since the Republicans have failed to lead, let us conservatives rise to the occasion and pick up the leadership role. I'm sending this email to about 400,000 conservative leaders, bloggers, talk show hosts, and activists.

If each of you would forward this email to everyone on your e-lists, and ask each person to forward it to those on their lists -- by tomorrow morning (election day), we will have reached over 20 million people.

I urge those who have the time, to write their own version of a message about President Obama. Writing to your family and friends in your own words is usually going to be more effective than a letter from a stranger. However, feel free to take any, all, or none of what I've written, but please send something. You owe it to yourself, your children and grandchildren, and to this great country that we inherited from those who came before us.

A Message that America Needs to Hear:

America is close to being changed forever from the wonderful land of liberty and freedom with unlimited opportunities and freedom, to a country ruled by an elite leader and ruling class who feel that they know what's best for us.

President Obama:

1...Is Anti-business -- which means the economy will not improve (and probably will worsen) as long as those who create the jobs are under attack by the President with higher taxes, more burdensome rules and regulations, more lawsuits and legal attacks;

2 ...Is Pro-higher taxes on everyone, especially those who work hard, are productive and successful;

3...Is Anti-energy independence -- He wants to put the coal industry out of business and opposes a large part of domestic oil and gas exploration;

4...Favors redistribution of wealth -- as he told Joe the Plumber and Charlie Gibson of ABC in a 2008 Democratic primary debate;

5...Is a Socialist (at best) who
a...Gave us a failed stimulus plan of almost $1 trillion

b...Gives us $1.3 trillion dollar annual deficits as far as the eye can see, to be paid by our children and grandchildren if America doesn't go bankrupt first

c...Took over 2 of our 3 car companies (GM and Chrysler)

d...Took over our largest banks

e...Took over the entire student loan program

f...Took over one of the worlds' largest insurance companies (AIG)

g...Took control over your and everyone else's health care (17% of our economy);

6...Is offended (or embarrassed) by America's exceptionalism and traveled around the world going from dictator to dictator apologizing for America;

7...Has a long history, starting as a teenager, of studying, befriending, and admiring socialists, Marxists, and communists

a...As a teenager, he spent most every evening listening to a card-carrying communist, Frank Marshall Davis, who extolled the so-called evils of America and the so-called virtues of Communism

b...Moved to Chicago as a young man and studied at the Saul Alinsky school for radicals

c...In his autobiography, he states that in college he sought out communist professors

d...While in Chicago, he became good friends with Bernadette Dorin and Bill Ayers, members of the infamous Weatherman Underground,and he held his first political fundraiser in their living room
e...For 20 years, he attended a church led by a radical anti-American preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Successful political campaigns give voters a tune they can whistle. Since Republican leaders have failed to lead, let us conservatives and Tea Partiers in the final hours pick up the fallen torch and lead.

Never before has the American way -- our foundations of individual freedom, free markets, family, and faith -- been so much at the mercy of one man and dozens of czars and a cadre of ruling class elites who mock and deride those American values, expressed in our Declaration of Independence and put into the law that governs our government -- the Constitution.

We are at a point in time when we can turn it all around, or become another failure of history. We cannot rely on the current GOP leadership, and we must take up this great cause ourselves.

Thank you for all you do and have done for the cause of freedom. I would appreciate your letting me know approximately how many people you contacted.

I've spent a lot of time preparing this and I ask you to take just a few minutes and forward it to many others.

Millions who came before us paid dearly for the freedoms we enjoy. Please, with their sacrifices in mind, take a few minutes and forward this message or your version of it, to all your email contacts.

Thank you and God bless you, your family and America.

Received by email from Richard A. Viguerie [rav@ConservativeHQ.com]

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Obama says Americans are saving too much

Based on a totally wrong theory of why businesses are not hiring. Who would hire when you never know what burden on businesses the out-of-control brainiacs in Washington are going to dream up next?

Alarmed by the rising savings rate, which liberal Keynesian economic theory views as potentially bad in a weak economy, intellectuals with close ties to the Obama administration, such as Matthew Yglesias, and liberal commentators such as Noam Scheiber, are floating the idea of a trillion-dollar bailout at taxpayer expense, using government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bailout would involve Fannie and Freddie writing off part of the mortgage balances of many people who are perfectly capable of making their mortgage payments, not in order to prevent defaults, but just in order to increase borrowers’ purchasing power so that they can spend more money. (The bailout would not cover all Americans, only many of the loans held by Fannie and Freddie.)

The cost of this bailout — perhaps a trillion dollars — would be borne by taxpayers, since Fannie and Freddie are already insolvent, and are expected to need as much as $363 billion more in taxpayer bailouts, even if this massive bailout proposal is not adopted. (Democrats in Congress recently blocked GOP proposals to reform Fannie and Freddie or limit their bailouts.)

This entire proposal, like many of the administration’s stimulus proposals, is based on the faulty assumption that weak consumer demand is the primary reason for the slow recovery. In fact, personal consumption has resumed rising, while private investment has fallen and remains low. Private investment is way down compared to past recoveries, driven partly by lack of confidence in the administration (a well-deserved lack of confidence given the administration’s anti-business policies). The savings rate has only increased slightly and remains lower in the U.S. than in most of the world.

More HERE

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Governments much more likely to destroy jobs than create jobs

Songs that are "golden oldies" have much less pleasant counterparts in politics-- namely, ideas and policies that have failed disastrously in the past but still keep coming back to be advocated and imposed by government. Some people may think these ideas are as good as gold, but brass has often been mistaken for gold by people who don't look closely enough.

One of these brass oldies is the idea that the government can and must reduce unemployment by "creating jobs." Some people point to the history of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment peaked at 25 percent, as proof that the government cannot simply stand by and do nothing when so many millions of people are out of work.

If we are going to look back at history, we need to make sure the history we look at is accurate. First of all, unemployment never hit 25 percent until after-- repeat, AFTER-- the federal government intervened in the economy.

What was unemployment like when the federal government first intervened in the economy after the stock market crash of 1929? It was 6.3 percent when that first intervention took place in June 1930-- down from a peak of 9 percent in December 1929, two months after the stock market crash.

Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the 12 months following the stock market crash of 1929. But it hit double digits within 6 months after government intervention-- and unemployment stayed in double digits for the entire remainder of the decade, as the government went in for one intervention after another.

The first federal intervention in June 1930 was the passage of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs by a Democratic Congress, a bill signed into law by Republican President Herbert Hoover. It was "bipartisan"-- but bipartisan nonsense is still nonsense and a bipartisan disaster is still a disaster.

The idea behind these higher tariffs was that reducing our imports of foreign goods would create more jobs for American workers. It sounds plausible, but more than a thousand economists took out newspaper ads, warning that these tariffs would be counterproductive.

That was because other countries would retaliate with their own import restrictions, reducing American exports, thereby destroying American jobs. That is exactly what happened. But there are still people today who repeat the brass oldie that restricting imports will save American jobs.

You can always save particular jobs in a particular industry with import restrictions. But you lose other jobs in other industries, not only because other countries retaliate, but also because of the economic repercussions at home.

You can save jobs in the American sugar industry by restricting imports of foreign sugar. But that results in higher sugar prices within the United States, leading to higher costs for American candy producers, as well as American producers of other products containing sugar. That leads to higher prices for those products, which in turn means lower sales at home and abroad-- and therefore fewer jobs in those industries.

A study concluded that there were three times as many jobs lost in the confection industry as were saved in the sugar industry. Restrictions on steel imports likewise led to an estimated 5,000 jobs being saved in the steel industry-- and 26,000 jobs being lost in industries producing products made of steel.

Similarly, the whole idea of the government itself "creating jobs" is based on regarding the particular jobs created by government as being a net increase in the total number of jobs in the economy. But, since the government does not create wealth to pay for these jobs, but only transfers wealth from the private sector, that leaves less wealth for private employers to create jobs.

Songs that are golden oldies bring enjoyment when they return. But brass oldies in politics just repeat the original disasters.

A statistical analysis by economists, published in 2004, concluded that federal interventions had prolonged the Great Depression of the 1930s by several years. How long will future research show that current government interventions prolonged the economic crisis we are living through now?

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

UN official honors chief Tiananmen butcher: "A United Nations official who has courted controversy in the past has presented an award to the military leader of the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests ahead of an official visit to China by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Sha Zukang, a Chinese national who is U.N. Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, gave the award last week to Gen. Chi Haotian, a former Chinese defense minister. Gen. Chi was chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army when he ordered the attack on the pro-democracy demonstrators.”

The media are Statist rather than liberal: "It’s telling that the loudest voices opposing pot legalization are coming from the mainstream media, politicians, and law enforcement. The three have a lot in common. Indeed, the Prop. 19 split illustrates how conservative critics of the mainstream media have it all wrong. The media — or at least the editorial boards at the country’s major newspapers — don’t suffer from liberal bias; they suffer from statism. While conservatives emphasize order and property, liberals emphasize equality, and libertarians emphasize individual rights, newspaper editorial boards are biased toward power and authority, automatically turning to politicians for solutions to every perceived problem.”

Taxman comes for online hotel booking: "Municipalities seeking to boost revenues to cover budget shortfalls caused by overspending are setting their sights on online booking companies such as Orbitz and Expedia. Booking hotels online has helped lower the cost of travel for consumers, offering discounted rates for budget, mid-range, and upscale hotels. However, state and local occupancy taxes collected by the hotels also reflect the discount.”

Government art: "I hope you like it, you helped pay for it. During times of cut-backs in the private sector, and voiced government concern over the deficit, why are we paying for this stuff? To me, the piece is even quite visually appealing, but if this really adds value to society there are foundations out there that will give grants to pay for these types of things. With no real budgetary pressure to efficiently allocate resources, governments have no way to figure out the appropriate amount or type of art in society.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. My Facebook page is also accessible as jonjayray (In full: http://www.facebook.com/jonjayray). For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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