George Demos kicked off his Hail Mary campaign to win the Republican nomination to challenge Congressman Tim Bishop in New York’s first Congressional District. As he did the last time around he boasts that he is the only true conservative in the race. His claims, though, are devoid of any facts to base them upon other than him saying so. His kickoff ad is either downright dishonest, or just sloppy. Either one hardly qualifies him to represent anyone.
Conservatism in the United States
President Obama Speaking at Solyndra
Congressman Tim Bishop has not been able to keep from spending, no matter what. The Postal Service has an $8.5 billion deficit, and Tim Bishop is out there fighting to keep an unneeded post office open. We are trillions of dollars in debt and he comes out blasting the Tea Party, because they want Congress to not waste anymore money on green boondoggles like Solyndra.
Photo by Andrew Aliferis
A fundamental difference between conservatives and progressives is the belief in individual responsibility. Conservatives believe in individual responsibility. Progressives do not.
What were three men with FDR emblazoned on their T-shirts doing at a FreedomWorks event? FreedomWorks is an activist organization that is partnered with tea party groups across the country. FDR is hardly an icon of the right.
Congressman Ron Paul, a perennial favorite of CPAC, the annual convention of the American Conservative Union, packed the house and then lit it up with his speech of liberty and libertarianism.
In an interview on Bloomberg radio yesterday, New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch talked about the perilous state of New York’s economy. Mr. Ravitch was a key player in the rescue of New York City from the brink of financial collapse in the 1970s. He talked about bankruptcy being an option and how New York City’s possible bankruptcy really brought banks to the negotiating table. He also talked about how important the financial services industry is to New York as a source of tax revenue. Then he let the cat out of the bag.
On October 17, 2010 members of TeaParty365 and Media Matters gathered in front of the New York Times headquarters and later in the day at the headquarters of NBC to protest the liberal distortions of those and other main stream media outlets.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fCL_o-WhFo&hd=1
It is interesting to note the tea party members who can be seen (Chinese, black, young white female) are not what the main stream media keep telling us make up the tea parties, while the liberal who stops to curse at the protest is an old white guy. The mainstream media did come to see what was going on and interviewed the organizers of the event as well as this correspondent, but seemed bored and disappointed that some self fulfillling controversy didn’t break out. Attempts to find any footage of their filming after the fact were fruitless.
First it was that Bush spent all eight years of his presidency (and was reelected after four of those years) destroying the economy and so we need to give Obama, what, eight years to fix it? Then it was blame Boehner. That didn’t work, because not many people know who John Boehner is. Then it was “the Republicans want to go back to the same old ways that got us into this mess.” Tell that to Arlen Specter, Lisa Murkowski, Mike Castle, Bob Bennett, Charlie Crist, Trey Grayson. Same old, same old? I don’t think so.
Now it is time to go negative. No, I don’t mean campaign ads. That was to be expected as the Democrats do not, repeat, do not want to run on their record, lest it get as ugly on November 2 as a town hall meeting. No, they are going negative on their base. The Democrat heavies are coming out and mocking their base to shame them into coming out and voting for them. Consider some of these gems.
The old bull Republicans continue to get rocked. Add Carl Paladino and Christine O’Donnell to the list that includes Rand Paul, Sharon Angle, Joe Miller and others. It drives home the point that was exposed in a Rasmussen poll that 72% of GOP voters say Republicans in Congress are out of touch with their base. On the Democrat side it is just the opposite where 61% of Democrat voters say the Dems in Congress fairly represent them. While the Democrats are standing pat, rank and file Republicans are asking for a new set of cards.
Liberty’s Life Line endorsed Mr. Lazio, because New York state government is such a dysfunctional mess it was felt more political experience and a detailed plan would make more headway than an outsider. However, the fire in the belly that Mr. Paladino demonstrated, we wish Mr. Lazio had. But Lazio ran another lackluster campaign as he did against Hillary Clinton for Senate, missing the key issue for voters by focusing on the Ground Zero mosque instead of the broken government. Oddly, he had a 24 page plan on how he would change things, but you had to hunt to find it. I have two suggestions for Mr. Lazio: drop out of the race on the Conservative line and free that up for Mr. Paladino, and give a copy of your plan to Mr. Paladino.
For the Republican party’s old pulls, it’s time to clean out your desks. Enough of the lamenting that we need moderates to win in the general election. When the going gets tough moderate Republicans vote with the Democrats. When do moderate Democrats vote with Republicans? Never, because there are no moderate Democrats. We don’t need any more Arlen Specters, Susan Collins, or Olympia Snowes. It is time to get polarized, energized, and laser focused on the issues that affect Americans. If that means we have two extremes, left and right, so be it. It also means Americans will have clear choices.
So let’s get behind the nominees and also put the old bulls out to pasture.
I guess that getting a tingle running up his leg only lasted so long before he had to give himself another fix. Since talking about all the successes of the current administration seemed like a hard sell, Mr. Matthews put together a hit piece on the Tea Parties and the right, or as he calls it, the “New Right.”
On his Hardball program, Matthews “documentary” was titled “The Rise of the New Right.” In it he tries to paint the Tea Party movement as a fringe group of racists, gun nuts, and generally a group waiting for a reason to break into violence.
You would be hard pressed to find a more over the top cheerleader for Barack Obama than Chris Matthews. Matthews took advantage of his position in the media to actively work to get Obama elected, and now he is crestfallen that General Electric, CBS, and Disney/ABC do not control the news like in the good old days. He openly attacks Fox News and blames the Internet for allowing the Tea Party to do an end run around the main stream media and get their information out. Matthews, like big government, is smarter than you. He knows what “news” you need to hear, and will diligently work to keep what you don’t need to know from reaching your eyes and ears.
The Tea Party that I know has some very basic principles:
- Fiscal responsibility
- Accountability
- Transparency
- Free market solutions
Pretty radical stuff, eh? In a Rasmussen poll taken earlier this month, 46% of voters say the Tea Party is good for America, while 31% disagree. Matthews doesn’t tell you this and he makes sure his “documentary” doesn’t provide the information that would let you draw that conclusion.
He reports on the militia movement and specifically mentions the Hutaree militia that plotted to kill a policeman and then those who would attend his funeral. While constantly tying the Tea Party, and the militia to the Republicans he doesn’t mention that the one person in the Hutaree militia whose political affiliation is known was a Democrat and he voted as such. Not that there is any linkage between what party one belongs to and being a nut-case, but a fair reporter might mention that to give an honest representation of the story.
Matthews also makes several references to violence against Democrats after the health care vote. He neglects to say that only one case of violence resulted in an arrest. That was for an attack against Republican Eric Cantor’s office. Any one can get a brick and write a note on it quoting one of the Founding Fathers, but until to catch who did it and find out who they really are, you don’t know if it is an extremist on the right, or a Saul Alinsky disciple on the left who wants to discredit the Tea Party people.
Matthews liberally, no pun intended, sprinkles through his story extremists on the right, going back to the 1930s, such as Father Coughlin, but nowhere does he mention extremists on the left. There is no profile of Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Wright, the Democrats who fought against the Civil Rights Act, while a majority of Republicans supported it. There is no mention of our government internment of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.
It’s getting closer to the mid-term elections and Matthews doesn’t like seeing everything he has bet his reputation on going down in flames. So he takes out this “hail Mary” pass to try to turn the tide against the Tea Party and scare people into staying safe with the Democrats. But this time, the main stream media is not in control. They can’t craft the message and force feed it to the American public. Broadcast news and many major newspapers are losing viewers and readership daily, because Toto has pulled the curtain back on the Great and Powerful Oz that was the main stream media and exposed it for what it is, a shill for the Progressive left.
