Commentary by Dick Young
Today Gallup announced that the GOP is ahead by an 18-point margin among likely voters in a low turn out environment. My guess is that conservatives will be showing up to the polls en masse this year, while liberals will continue to wonder why the voted for Barack Obama, who has failed to move forward on their wish-lists regarding Git-mo, warrantless wiretaps and a repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The Gallup poll is a major wakeup call for Democrats in these congressional races. You can bet they will be doing everything they can to get out their base in this mid-term election year. If you’re in a union, look for your leadership to be pounding your door down to get out the vote. Don’t listen to them. Remember that union leadership is what elected Barack Obama and brought two years (so far) of economic malaise and uncertainty to America, not to mention Obamacare, which threatens to take away health care benefits for workers around America.
With a conservative landslide likely on its way, Americans have to start looking forward to what to do with those conservative majorities. Republicans cannot return to the meaningless existence they exhibited under the Bush administration. No rubber stamping of spending bills, no jacking up the debt to continue the empire abroad, and most importantly, no raising of taxes.
Another priority for Republicans in Congress in 2011 should be to send power back to the states. Today, states like Virginia (the home of America’s first states’ rights advocate, Thomas Jefferson) are clawing back some power from the federal government to decide their own fates. Virginia will soon vote on a “Repeal Amendment” that will setup a framework for the state to exercise its 10th Amendment rights by repealing federal legislation is considers unconstitutional. When Congress is seated in January, GOP congressmen should help this process by voting to send some federal powers back to the states. The Department of Education is ripe for repeal, with its responsibilities heading back to the states themselves.
The message here is don’t get complacent. Big poll numbers can evaporate with overconfidence. Continue to pay attention to the fleecing of America being done by this administration, and be sure you show up to the polls in November to stop it. Founders like Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry to major risks with their lives to procure this country for freedom loving Americans, let’s not let them down.
Commentary by E.J. Smith
You can kiss the old establishment GOP goodbye. The new face for conservative principles will begin and end with the Tea Party. The November mid-terms will be just the beginning of a never before seen movement towards federalism. The right of the states, and more importantly the rights of the people, will gain power from the ground up to dictate to politicians the way forward. Look no further than the coalition of Virginia’s statewide tea-party federation the Richmond Tea Party. This weekend they will announce their legislative centerpiece for next year, the Repeal Amendment. If passed, states, with a two-thirds majority vote, will be able to repeal unpopular federal laws such as Obamacare. This is the type of political power, for the people, that our founders had in mind.
Commentary by Deborah Young on Time for a Hiring Freeze by Darrell Issa, National Review
Since December of 2007 the federal government has added 212,100 people to its workforce, that’s unconscionable. Everyone of those new federal employees is a drain on the taxpayers of America. The federal government should be downsizing, not growing, to limit the financial burdens of its bureaucracy on the lives of Americans. Worse yet, as Americans have been forced to watch their pay stagnate or decline, or worse yet disappear, federal workers have been getting raises all along. There should be parity between average private sector workers and government employees.
Commentary by Dick Young on Obama Ripped On Afghan Policy by John Gizzi, Human Events
Former Reagan secretary of State George Schultz is ripping the Obama administration for its complete failures in Afghanistan. And he’s knocking Congress for leaving America’s businesses wondering about their future tax rates until after election season. Schultz is correct on both counts. The approach taken by Barack Obama in Afghanistan simply will not work. No government in Kabul will ever be able to control the country in an effective manner. And Congress is truly doing the most economic damage possible by leaving businesses to guess about future tax rates. How are businesses to be expected to deploy the trillions of dollars on their balance sheets with knowing what tax rate environment they’re facing next year? It’s no wonder the economy is stagnant, no one wants to make a bet that could be broken by Congress.
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