06/29/15

Forum: Is it Time To Replace The GOP? Would You Support A New Party?

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: Is it Time To Replace The GOP? Would You Support A New Party?

The Noisy Room: I am very close to that pivot shift. The tipping point for me will be the nomination for 2016. If a true conservative does not clinch the nomination due to RINO machinations, then I will swing to a Third Party, consequences be damned. There will be those who say, if you do that, Hillary Clinton is assured the ascendency. My reply to that is if someone such as Jeb Bush is nominated, Hillary Clinton or the likes of Bernie Sanders will win anyway and we have nothing to lose anymore. I truly believe if a candidate such as Ted Cruz is forced to run on a Third Party ticket, he stands an excellent chance of winning – barring voter fraud and being assassinated by the powers-that-be.

I believe a new Civil Rights movement has just been born out of this week’s Supreme Court rulings. The end of our Constitutional government is upon us with lawless rulings from the bench and the dissolution of the three branches of government into one monstrously corrupt executive behemoth. Leaders will now rise in that movement and Ted Cruz will almost certainly be one of them. He is one of the few with the stones to stand and tell it like it is. He is also a master debater and won’t be silenced. I am joining with other Constitutionalists out there such as Trevor Loudon, James Simpson, Cliff Kincaid, Wild Bill, the Black Robe Regiment and many, many others calling for civil resistance. We will not comply. A third party could very well be at the forefront of the resistance. As Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish penned it, be the best saboteur you can be.

The Independent Sentinel: I always said that I would wait until 2016 to give up on Republicans and I would prefer to do that. They are our only hope and they haven’t had the majority they need to overrule Barack Obama on anything except those bills that liberals like.

Oddly, when the Democrats held power, they got what they wanted and now that they don’t hold power, they get what they want. The establishment refuses to use the power of the purse. It appears that the Republican establishment is too weak-willed to fight back, think keeping their jobs is the prime objective, or maybe they are just as liberal as the Democrats.

The establishment is now punishing Conservatives who do what their constituents want over their demands. We see Mitch McConnell ripping into the Confederate flag instead of telling people that flag was a creation of the Democratic party. The list of unappealing Republican establishment responses is endless.

If they don’t cut it out and if they shove a RINO down our throats, then I will join any reasonable movement to start a third party.

JoshuaPundit: I’ve done a lot of thinking about this one, especially as I saw the reaction from all sides to this weeks’ events.

I am by no means a die hard Republican, but I am loyal to certain principles they supposedly represent. I actually hoped that after they won control of congress, we would finally see them do as they promised and uphold those principles again. But we were simply lied to.

I no longer feel it is possible to hijack or take control of the GOP. My own feeling is that this Regime’s unprecedented NSA spying and secret data collection unearthed things certain congressmen, government figures and even perhaps a Supreme Court Justice or two desperately want hidden. After all, this president has used these tactics before, and that kind of leverage would certainly account for his aggressive attitude since the midterms. Whether it’s that or simple cowardice or avarice, it doesn’t matter.

I also no longer see waiting around until 2016 as an option. The time to organize is now, a year and a half before the elections so that cohesive principles can be agreed on, strategy plotted out and lines of communication opened. We need to act to secure the liberty of ourselves and our prosperity, rather than once again depending on the Republican Party (or the Democrats, for that matter) to do it for us.

Doing so gives us a much larger, united seat at the table. And it provides a framework for something new and badly, badly needed.

And another thing to consider… we may need that unity and that structure before 2016. These recent decisions have quite a bit of teeth in them and the way they’re certain to be enforced by the Obama Administration is pretty clear, at least to me.

Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason: Those of us who actually care enough about our country to follow politics have come to the realization that both the Democrat and Republican Party no longer represent the American people. Unfortunately, while we grew up, went to work, raised our families, and pursued our personal version of the American Dream, the “trusted servants” we elected to protect our rights and interests were pursuing their own agendas. When we finally realized what was happening we got involved and worked very hard to get professed “conservative” Republicans elected, only to be bitterly disappointed once they took office.

We now know that no one, or very few, of our elected officials are working and looking out for our interests. The Democrat Party has been infiltrated with progressives bent on destroying everything that has made America great, in particular the middle class. The Republicans are no better, beholden to big corporations and bankers, also at the expense of the middle class. The government has become a massive wealth redistribution machine through the confiscatory theft of our hard earned wages via numerous tax and regulatory policies.

After last week’s Supreme Court decisions, it has become even more apparent that activist judges allow their political leanings to color their decisions instead of considering the cases before them with strict scrutiny and interpretation of the Constitution. We are no longer a nation that follows the rule of law or respects the will of the people or state’s rights.

We do need a third party and I would support one. The question is do we have enough time to turn everything around, and who would stand for us and be our voice.

Bookworm Room: To put it bluntly, I think that the Republican Party sucks eggs. It does not represent conservatives. Instead, as James Taranto long-ago said, it represents Leftists who have a slight edge on Democrats when it comes to fiscal conservativism. The GOPers are on board with every single Progressive idea — they just think that we ought to be a little more responsible about paying as we travel down The Road to Serfdom.

Having said that, I think true conservatives lack the critical mass to create a meaningful third party, especially with a pivotal election less than a year and a half away. Moreover, in this technologically driven age, the Republican Party has the infrastructure, and that’s something that can’t quickly be replicated either.

What I’d like to see is a coup without the Republican Party. Not having previously been of a revolutionary frame of mind, I’m not quite sure how to go about doing this, but I would certainly begin with fighting vigorously in the Republican primaries to destroy every RINO, starting with Boehner and McConnell.

Interestingly, an idea that has been picking up more and more traction in the comments section at my own blog is the feeling that, true to his Chicago roots, Obama has been blackmailing people like Boehner, Roberts, and McConnell. Indeed, my readers feel that the prosecution against Hastert was a little warning to all three of them to toe the Obama line with both the trade deal and the Obamacare ruling.

I have to admit that this idea, crazy though it is, seems more and more feasible lately. It certainly explains a lot of the insanity going on at the highest level of Republican governance, including Trey Gowdy’s peculiar inept and slow Benghazi investigation.

It was Sherlock Holmes who said when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Either that, or I’m getting even more crazy than the Leftists.

The Glittering Eye: In political science there’s something called “Duverger’s law”. That’s the observed tendency of all non-proportional representation, “first past the post” representative democracies to become two party systems. The implication is that any third party is strictly a temporary phenomenon–it won’t be able to stay around long enough to gain any real influence. Add to that the reality that when the electorate is closely divided between the two surviving parties a third party tends to throw elections towards the party it is least like and you’ve got a pretty substantial argument against a third party.

Forty-five years ago I read a very interesting history of the New York State Conservative Party that outlined the circumstances peculiar to New York that made its creation a sensible move and articulated the party’s role: to nudge the Republican Party, in New York at the time very much more liberal than it is now (remember John Lindsay?), in a direction more to its liking. Unless and until we go to a proportional representation system that’s the role I’d see for any third party and I think the Tea Party is filling that role pretty effectively for the Republicans.

Don Surber: Meh.

Ask Marion: It is absolutely time for the GOP to go, as did the Whig party, whom they replaced!

The GOP leadership has stabbed their base, as well as the American people in general, in the back and has sold out to the ruling elite, as have the Democrats. For anyone who doubts that or does not keep up with the day to day treachery in Washington, D.C. please read: The Time For Changing Is Now. The time for change ”is” now, and in order to save America and what freedoms we have left, the change must take place swiftly in the form of not a 3rd party but rather a new replacement party, nullifying the GOP.

The creation of a 3rd party while leaving the GOP in place would just weaken the ability of average Americans to fight for and win back what the Constitution gives us. A new party must replace the Republican party. It is something I have fought supporting for a long time, but the past couple of weeks have proven that we cannot wait any longer.

As Sarah Palin said when she was asked this same question. “;I do not wish to leave the Republican Party, but if they leave me…?!?” Well their leadership seems to be leaving all of us, leaving me no choice but to support a new party to replace them!

Wolf Howling: It is time for a lot of things. One is a complete restructuring of our completely out of control courts. Two is a requirement that no regulation pass into effect until voted on by our elected representatives As to time for a third party, under normal circumstance, the answer would be a resounding yes. The Republican hierarchy are leading the way in enacting Obama’s second term agenda. Having voted Republicans into office in what was a historic wave election, they promptly rolled over and played dead. It is long past time for a third party. Our current crop of Republican congresscritters, as currently constituted, are a fifth column.

That said, we are on the knife’s edge of being so far transformed by Obama and the left, that to support a third party now would be to kiss America – the America envisioned by our Founders and written into our Constitution – goodbye forever. We need to vote for the most conservative candidate – and that appears to me to be either Ted Cruz or Carly Fiorina. We then have to hope against hope that it actually makes a difference in the direction our country is headed.

Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

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06/26/15

The End Of Constitutional Government

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

It’s been an historic week and although I am not surprised by the Supreme Court decisions, they saddened me beyond belief. I have sadly come to the conclusion that many of my colleagues are correct… our Constitutional form of government is now dead and Obama’s transformative ‘change’ is all but complete.

Things are now snowballing and it is more than most Americans can take or bear. From gay marriage and the ensuing infringement on free speech and our religious rights, to enforced Obamacare, to forced wealth redistibution in our neighborhoods, to the EPA run amok… our freedoms are being absolutely nullified. States are now saying they won’t comply with the EPA on coal and who can blame them? Americans will get very dangerous when they are hungry and cold. And then there is the Iran deadline, which is this weekend. Instead of holding their feet to fire, we are actually giving Iran nuclear reactors while they shout, “Death to America!” in their parliament. Insanity is the norm now. Then there is the increased Islamic State threat on our southern border and the attacks on our power grid coming down the pike. It’s surreal and all instigated, manipulated and planned for by our government – the ultimate enemy from within.

Adding to the tyrannical frenzy of the aftermath of the mass shooting in South Carolina, evidently America is cool with censoring her own history, but wants to hang on to the likes of Nazi Germany and bloody communist regimes. Satanism is still in vogue it would seem as well… but if you are a lover of the Confederate flag, well, you should be summarily burned at the stake. Let’s not leave out Stalin or concentration camps as making the ‘cool’ list either. And it goes without saying that Che Guevara is tres chic. Prohibition of thought and our history is all the rage now. No doubt next on the censorship bandwagon… burning books and thought police. Oh, wait…

The flaming lynch mob mentality of Progressives is burning through businesses across the former land of the free. They are feeling immense pressure to conform and be politically correct. None of them seem to have a spine. This is insane. Not only are they banning all Confederate flags and calling for Civil War statues to be taken down (which is erasing American history), they are getting rid of General Lee, an orange Dodge Charger from “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Walmart and Amazon have stopped selling anything having to do with the Confederate flag, but Walmart is still selling Che Guevara shirts, as well as Castro memorabilia and Iranian flags. Apple just removed Civil War Games from their App Store. South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky are all removing Confederate flags as well. It’s an all you can eat buffet of political correctness feeding a ‘get em!’ move by Progressives. Now, they want to ban Gone With The Wind. We have literally plummeted down the rabbit hole and are sipping tea with the Mad Hatter. The Constitution is now being replaced with censorship and regulation – it’s incomprehensible.

At least one good thing came out of the Supreme Court this week. During the Great Depression, the government decided that prices paid to farmers were too low and undertook to correct the problem by limiting their output. It was a fascist move then and is still one now. It is sheer theft. Marvin and Laura Horne decided not to play that game and took their beef all the way to the Supreme Court – raisin hell, so-to-speak. And they won on Monday! The feds claimed they owed $700,000 because they would not surrender 47% of their crop for over a decade to the government with no compensation. Not even the left-leaning Supremes could let that one slide.

Raisin farmer Marvin Horne stands in a field of grapevines planted next to his home in
Kerman, Calif. Horne was accused of violating a 1937 federal rule that regulates raisin prices
by setting aside a percentage of crop to avoid a glut. (Gary Kazanjian, AP)

The Raisin Administrative Committee, which operates under the supervision of the USDA, sells or gives away the raisins it takes, with the proceeds going to cover its operating costs, storage fees and promotional efforts abroad. If any money is left, the farmers get some of it. If not, they receive nada. Looks like the Road to Serfdom has been detoured on this issue, at least for now. The unconstitutional theft being imposed on farmers such as the Hornes is no more. But at least these raisin farmers can get back to raising their crops and taking care of business – liberal fascism has moved on to the next hot topic.

Then there was the ultimate betrayal by Justice Roberts and the ruling in favor of Obamacare this week. The ruling stomped all over state’s rights and bent over backwards to reinterpret the Obamacare statute in favor of federal exchanges. “The somersaults of statutory interpretation they [the Justices of the Supreme Court] have performed …will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence,” concludes Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. “And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

“So it rewrites the law to make tax credits available everywhere,” he dissents. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” The Court’s interpretation is “absurd,” Justice Scalia opined. And right he is. Scalia is a brilliant legal mind and he is horrified by the Leftist turn of the court. This must tear his soul apart. This was simply a political power play and one has to wonder, as I have before, if Chief Roberts has skeletons in his closet that are being used to sway his opinion.

This partisan ruling will have wide-ranging, catastrophic ramifications for America. The majority opinion states that “The combination of no tax credits and an ineffective coverage requirement could well push a State’s individual insurance market into a death spiral.” And it inevitably will. Which in turn, will usher in single-payer healthcare. It’s coming.

“It is implausible that Congress meant the Act to operate in this manner,” Justice John Roberts writes for the majority. Really? Because it looks entirely plausible to me. In fact, choreographed.

Justice Scalia notes that these Justices are “presuppos[ing] the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges.” In layman terms, that means that federal tax credits that have already been given to millions of people must continue. Along with the tax credits will come higher premiums, crappier healthcare, death panels, higher deductibles and part-time employment as the national norm.

This is tyranny and what you are seeing here is the dissolution of the three branches of constitutional government we are based upon. We now have one executive behemoth branch that is drunk with power and careening out of control, right on schedule.

Ted Cruz’s statement on the Supreme Court’s ruling:

“Today’s decision in King v. Burwell is judicial activism, plain and simple. For the second time in just a few years, a handful of unelected judges has rewritten the text of Obamacare in order to impose this failed law on millions of Americans. The first time, the Court ignored federal law and magically transformed a statutory ‘penalty’ into a ‘tax.’ Today, these robed Houdinis transmogrified a ‘federal exchange’ into an exchange ‘established by the State.’

“As Justice Scalia rightfully put it, ‘Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.” He also said, ‘We should start calling this law SCOTUSCare’ – I agree.

“If this were a bankruptcy case, or any other case of ordinary statutory interpretation, the result would have been 9-0, with the Court unanimously reversing the Obama administration’s illegal actions. But instead, politics intervened.

“For nakedly political reasons, the Supreme Court willfully ignored the words that Congress wrote, and instead read into the law their preferred policy outcome. These judges have joined with President Obama in harming millions of Americans. Unelected judges have once again become legislators, and bad ones at that. They are lawless, and they hide their prevarication in legalese. Our government was designed to be one of laws, not of men, and this transparent distortion is disgraceful.

“At the same time, crocodile tears are flooding our nation’s capital today over the Supreme Court’s decision to illegally rewrite Obamacare, which has been a disaster since its inception. But one day of faux outrage from the Washington Cartel won’t fool the millions of courageous conservatives across our country. They know the Republican leadership in Washington is quietly celebrating the Court’s decision. If they believe this issue is now settled so they don’t have to address it, they are sorely mistaken.

“Every GOP candidate for the Republican nomination should know that this decision makes the 2016 election a referendum on the full repeal of Obamacare.

“I have made repeal of this disastrous law a top priority since the first day I arrived in the Senate and have made its repeal central to my campaign. Any candidate not willing to do the same—and campaign on it every day—should step aside.

“The Court adopted the IRS’s blatantly unlawful reading of the statute to make subsidies available to individuals on federal exchanges, when Congress expressly provided the opposite.

“After today’s ruling, Obamacare will now be responsible for imposing illegal taxes on more than 11 million individuals and for burdening hundreds of thousands of businesses with illegal penalties on their workers, killing jobs, and further slowing economic growth. President Obama’s health care law remains deeply unpopular and is harming countless Americans by increasing costs and worsening the quality of care.

“I remain fully committed to the repeal of Obamacare—every single word of it. And, in 2017, we will do exactly that.”

This is why I support Ted Cruz – he stands for something and isn’t afraid to walk the walk. And the Left fears and hates him for it.

Next, in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., the Supreme Court found in favor of Obama’s wealth redistribution in communities. Now, the government can decide who lives where and they can literally bribe community leaders into doing ‘gentrified’ slum housing just about anywhere. This will socially and demographically engineer America. It will force people to live among criminals and others they are trying to stay away from. It will cause crime to skyrocket and property values to plummet. The regulatory groundwork is now laid for substantial redistribution of tax dollars. Gradually cities will effectively swallow up their surrounding municipalities, with merged school districts and forced redistribution of public spending working together to kill the appeal of the suburbs. This is Agenda 21 and it is now nationally sanctioned. This is also aimed at manipulating the voter demographic to ensure a Marxist will stay in power indefinitely.

But, I saved the worst for last… in another 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally, following on the heels of Mexico doing the same thing last week. Funny, I don’t remember marriage of any sort being mentioned in the Constitution or as being seen as ‘a right.’ This decision will literally touch every aspect of our lives. It’s not just the act of non-traditional marriage; it’s all that it entails.

The Left will use this ruling to try and destroy religious freedom of all forms of worship, except for Islam. It won’t just be the refusal by Christian pastors and priests to consecrate homosexual unions… it will go far beyond that. If you go to a church that preaches biblical principles and traditional marriage, that could cost you your job. Children in all schools will be subjected to gender theories and all forms of sexual preferences – everything from homosexuality, to pedophilia, to polygamy, to incest, to bestiality and on it goes. This is what the liberal Progressives want – the destruction of all morality, faith and the family unit. It is the very bedrock of communism come to life in America. This ruling on gay marriage was the equivalent of a legalistic Pandora’s Box. It’s already occurring in the military – ministers are being court-martialed or rotated out because of their Christian faith. And of course, you are seeing it playing out with wedding chapels, bakeries, florists and photographers.

It will also be used as a weapon to silence free speech. It’s already happening. Witness the editorial board of PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, PA who is taking a hardcore stance against those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling to legalize gay marriage:

As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.

And that will happen as well on the airwaves and on the Internet. Blogs, such as mine, who support traditional marriage will be censored, fined or banned. Prison is also a possibility.

As my friend, Bookworm Room, so astutely put it, we have an incredibly dangerous clash of constitutional rights looming and I wouldn’t place odds on our side winning at this point. Businesses and schools will get slammed and litigated to death over this.

Justice Antonin Scalia nailed it:

The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic. It is one thing for separate concurring or dissenting opinions to contain extravagances, even silly extravagances, of thought and expression; it is something else for the official opinion of the Court to do so. Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent. “The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.”23 (Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality [whatever that means] were freedoms? …

And just as Bookie quoted it, I will quote my friend James Simpson on gay marriage – because it goes to the heart of the matter:

The Left uses “rights” agendas to wrap itself in the mantle of righteousness and seize the moral high ground, tactically putting us on the defense in the process. But they couldn’t care less about the actual issue except in its ability to facilitate their path to power.

The agenda is never the agenda for the Left. And this is especially true for gay marriage. Homosexual marriage is a Trojan horse tactic. The true agenda is to establish the primacy of homosexual rights over the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded on this principle, and the gay marriage movement seeks to destroy it.

Consider that Annise Parker, the lesbian mayor of Houston, Texas, demanded to review pastors’ church sermons before public outrage forced her to back off. We have already seen how small businesses have been singled out and attacked for refusing to provide certain services to gays.

What is less known is that these gay couples are frequently part of the movement. They deliberately seek out businesses known for their Christian owners. They deliberately demand a service they know in advance will be refused. When the inevitable happens they use it as pretext to destroy the business and savage its owners. Doesn’t it amaze you how quickly legal groups immediately materialize to assist in the attack? The fact that they got unexpected push back through a spontaneous crowd sourcing campaign to support one pizza shop will not dissuade them from future efforts. If gay marriage is adopted, their current bullying behavior will look like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

This is a highly organized, nationwide campaign of vilification against Christians. But even Christians are not the ultimate target. If the First Amendment can be challenged this way; if a certain group’s “rights” can trump the U.S. Constitution, and if the Supreme Court can actually issue an edict making it so, then the entire Constitution has become meaningless. This is the Left’s true agenda and it always has been. This is the Cultural Marxists’ endgame. The issue is not the issue. The issue for them has always been destroying our country to impose socialism — with them in charge, of course. In order to do that they have to strip America of its culture, its traditions, and most importantly, the most important law of the land, the U.S. Constitution.

Persecution and tyranny are upon us. Now is the time for Christians and Constitutionalists to come together and make a stand. We are being persecuted and forced to go against all we believe in. I for one will stand and I will definitely not comply. Neither will the Black Robe Regiment. This will reverberate across all of our society, our laws and our lives. Soon, Americans will find that standing on their Christian beliefs will cost them their jobs, their families and maybe their lives. Marxism has swept global leadership and they are in the process of bringing their boots down on our necks. If the government enforces this blatant violation of free speech and religion here in the US, they will have to take us to jail. Americans will not comply.

I agree with Justice Scalia that this ruling is a threat to democracy and to the Republic itself. This decision effectively puts the State (the federal government) above the individual and this was never what our founding fathers intended. In fact, they warned us against this. The Supreme Court has turned activist, legislating from the bench, instead of being supreme judges of the land as they were so assigned. As JoshuaPundit puts it, what principles do you stand for? Just what are you willing to compromise on? It’s time to take a stand and choose a side. It was a nice Constitutional Republic while it lasted… now it’s time to reboot and fight. I hear a third party calling.