Restoring Sanity? Not So Much...

Speaking as a reasonably sane individual, I have a hard time taking political sanctimony from a comedian seriously.

Judging from these first glimpses, it doesn't look like the Stewart/Colbert rally really accomplished anything productive.

And The Fun Continues...

It isn't even election day yet, and the "voting irregularities" have already begun.

Voters in Las Vegas have reported that, when they went to vote for Republican Sharon Angle, Harry Reid's name was already selected.

A voter in Craven County, NC has reported that when he selected to vote for all Republican candidates, he found that all of the Democrats had been selected.

This will only get worse come election day; be vigilant and pay attention when you vote.

The Obama Implosion

It's kind of fun watching the Democratic Party collapse in on itself as they continue to realize just how slim their chances are in next month's elections.  They've gone into full-fledged panic mode, because all indications now show that they face monumental losses in the House, and if they manage to hold on to their majority in the Senate, it will be by the slimmest of margins.

But as the pressure on the Democrats increases, their campaign rhetoric becomes more and more dangerous.  While their recent attack on the Chamber of Commerce has absolutely no basis in fact, President Obama is sticking with it, offering more and more baseless speculation as to where the GOP's campaign funding is coming from.

Now, you would think that if the GOP is doing something illegal in funding their campaigns, and the President knows about it, he would start an official investigation into the matter.  The fact that there is no investigation is telling: there is no wrongdoing, just more and more ambiguous accusations by the President of the United States.

This is just one more instance of President Obama making accusations against unnamed "special interests."  Before, his only complaint was that "they talk about me like I'm a dog."  But now that they're truly threatening his ability to push his corrupt socialist agenda onto America, he is calling them "a threat to our democracy."  Think about that: that's quite an accusation for a sitting president to make with absolutely no evidence to back him up.

See the video on RealClearPolitics

As much as I would love to see the GOP run roughshod over the Donkey Party next month, if they're taking illegal campaign contributions, it should be investigated and the perpetrators prosecuted.  If, on the other hand, President Obama, his administration and his party are just making up false accusations in the hopes of whipping up their base and maintaining power, then it becomes a question of whether President Obama should be impeached.  He is, after all, making a very serious accusation - he's right on the edge of accusing the GOP of treason.  High crimes and misdemeanors?  Possibly.  It's already come to light that the First Lady directly violated Illinois election law by campaigning at a polling place in Chicago, and Illinois elections officials and the Obama administration have made it abundantly clear that they plan to do absolutely nothing about it.

It seems that there are no depths to which the Democrats will not go in order to maintain power.  All citizens should definitely be vigilant come election day.

A New Conservative Joins The Fold

Announcing the birth of Emma Claire Cleveland, born on October 6 2010 at 12:46 am.  She weighed 8 lbs, 2 oz at birth and measured 20.5 in.

Why The Buckley Rule Doesn't Apply

With Tea Party Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's primary election victory in Delaware, many Republican and conservative commentators are calling the choice of O'Donnell a bad thing, citing "the Buckley Rule."  Charles Krauthammer came out today with a column criticizing the Tea Party and the O'Donnell pick, citing the Buckley Rule, saying

"Of course Mike Castle is a liberal Republican. What do you expect from Delaware? A DeMint? Castle voted against Obamacare and the stimulus. Yes, he voted for cap-and-trade. That's batting .667. You'd rather have a Democrat who bats .000 and who might give the Democrats the 50th vote to control the Senate?"

But there is a problem with this line of thinking: it ignores the big picture of the Tea party.

The Buckley Rule:
Support the most conservative candidate who is electable.

The Buckley Rule sounds good on the surface, but you just can't apply it to the O'Donnell election because in this case, using the Buckley Rule assumes that the Tea Party has a singular goal of undoing the Democrats' majorities in the House and the Senate.  While that does happen to be one of the Tea Party's short-term goals, the issues that brought about the frustration and angst that resulted in the Tea Party's creation won't be solved in a single election cycle...and in point of fact, electing liberal Republicans just happens to be antithetical to the entire purpose of the Tea Party.

In fact, it was the Buckley Rule and the Republican Party's "big tent" strategy that directly contributed to the creation of the Tea Party - the GOP is supposed to be the conservative party in America, but they have sold their soul in order to win elections, and their base conservative constituency is tired of it.  We're done with seeing our values sold out by Republicans like Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Olympia Snowe and, I dare say, George W. Bush.

Criticizing the Tea Party for not adhering to the Buckley Rule demonstrates the incredibly short-sighted view of the Tea Party held by the party elites and many commentators.  The Tea Party isn't just about winning a few elections in the short term in order to stop Obama's agenda.  While that is one goal of the Tea Party, there are also many in the Tea Party looking to bring the Republican Party back to its conservative roots; bowing to the party's misguided ideas about "electability" is what got the Republican Party relegated back to the minority in 2008.

If the Republicans want to remain a viable force in American politics in the long-term, they would do well to heed this lesson from the Tea Party: getting back to conservatism is the overriding goal.  While there are no guarantees that Christine O'Donnell will lose her Senate race, as most of the commentators are predicting, it's better for the Republicans to lose a few elections than it would be to see conservatives split from the party, because a split in the party would guarantee lost elections for the Republicans for years to come.