Electability is important.  Less important is what Republican Party intelligentsia deems “electable.”  With primary season heating up, in both the race for president and other offices, we would do well to examine what kind of candidate is or isn’t electable.

If it were solely up to what we’ll generically call the Republican Establishment, electability rankings might go as follows:

1. Incumbents

2. Moderate-to-liberal Republicans with their own campaign money

3. Moderate-to-liberal Republicans without their own campaign money

4. “Anybody?  Really, is there anyone else who will run?  Please.”

5. Conservatives

The thinking is that candidates without strong ideological stances will appeal to independent voters — who tend to be less ideological in their views.

The theory reminds me of when my mother observed that boys, in order to impress girls, tend to do things that impress other boys.  Similarly, politicos and pundits try to impress independents by doing things that other partisans perceive as independent.  But just as running fast, jumping high, and lifting heavy things often fail to impress would-be sweethearts on the second-grade playground, so too is the Establishment’s premise often incorrect.

The Establishment’s trump card is the 1964 landslide defeat of the very conservative Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.  (Yes, from 48 years ago — apparently exit polls from William Henry Harrison’s failed 1836 campaign aren’t available.)  Conservatives usually counter the Goldwater argument with Ronald Reagan, a conservative who won in a landslide.

Those two races were very different.  Goldwater’s opponent, Lyndon Johnson, rode into the 1964 election on a wave of sympathy and popularity due to the recent assassination of John F. Kennedy.  It’s unlikely that any nominee would have defeated Johnson.  Because of the unprecedented events preceding the Johnson-Goldwater race, it’s perhaps the worst race in the modern era from which to draw conclusions.

Reagan, on the other hand, had at least two advantages over Goldwater.  First, the harmful effects of big government were far more apparent in 1980 than in 1964.  Second, Reagan’s opponent, unlike Johnson, had no externally created political advantage.

The question Republican primary voters must ask themselves is which previous presidential scenario is most applicable to the 2012 race.  Barring any extraordinary events, president Obama looks far more like a 1980 Jimmy Carter than a 1964 Lyndon Johnson.

“Ah, yes,” says the Establishment, “but look at what happened with the winnable 2010 Senate races in Nevada, Colorado, and Delaware.”  A closer look is indeed warranted.

Of those three races, only Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell failed to win among independent voters, losing by just three percentage points at 48%-45%.  Nevada’s Sharron Angle defeated Reid among independents 48%-44%, and Colorado’s Joe Buck won independents by an astonishing 16-point margin (53%-37%) [1].

If we factor the 2010 Senate races into the electability argument, we must also mention the candidates in Florida and Wisconsin.  Both Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson won while articulating a stronger conservative message than anyone in the entire U.S. Senate (save perhaps Jim DeMint).  Along the way they each won independent voters by double-digits.

In Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Nevada, and Wisconsin (all states carried by Barack Obama in 2008), all but one conservative/Tea Party candidate won among independent voters.  The only exception being O’Donnell, whose campaign, because of Republican backbiting, a biased media, and her own missteps, had little to do with her political positions and everything to do with “witchcraft” and other peripheral narratives.

The Establishment’s electability argument wilts when compared with today’s political realities.

Beyond the viability arguments, there is another consideration.  For argument’s sake, let’s say that (despite the data) the more conservative candidate is less palatable to independent voters and that it would be safer to nominate a moderate or liberal Republican.  With a stagnating economy, entitlement time bombs, new entitlements coming online, and America’s Obama-accelerated decline, what if we don’t have time to be safe?

To paraphrase an old adage, the road to hell is paved with electable candidates.  If the slow demise of American exceptionalism is our goal, then the establishment position is fine.  If our goal is to indefinitely preserve that exceptional nature, we must take more deliberate action.

This isn’t 1964.  Conservatives have a stronger position politically and less time to rescue the country from the mediocrity (or worse) that awaits us if we lose.

After the very strong ADP employment report on Thursday, many economists marked-up their forecasts for Friday’s official payroll report. We moved ours up 5,000, and went into the report at 140,000 net new private sector jobs. Ouch…the official report showed just 57,000 new private sector jobs and equities immediately headed south.

TAMPA — The candidates for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Florida clearly believe red-meat conservatism will be the favored flavor among R primary voters in 2012, as it was in 2010. They’re probably correct.

Whether unapologetic conservatism is the key to beating liberal Democratic (pardon the redundancy) incumbent Bill Nelson in the general election is still unclear. In the few polls taken so far, “generic Republican” is competitive against Nelson, while the four actually running don’t do so swell. But it’s early.

In 2010 former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, now U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, came out of right field to beat the establishment’s candidate, formerly popular Florida Charlie Crist, by 20 points. He was the most conservative state-wide victor Florida has seen in several cycles. Three Republicans won cabinet posts in 2010 pushing conservative agendas. The state’s U.S. House delegation became more R, a one-sided 19-6 majority now for the GOP. Bite-your-ankles conservative Republican Allen West even defeated a Democratic incumbent in limousine-liberal Palm Beach County.

Republicans eager to strap on Nelson include Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos, former U.S. Senator George LeMieux, and former Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner. Orlando area steak-house restaurateur Craig Miller, oh-for-one in congressional races, says he’ll decide soon whether to add his name to the Senate menu. Mike McCalister, a Tea-Party friendly retired Army colonel, has also thrown his hat in, but showed little ability to attract votes or attention in his 2010 race for governor.

Depending on how much 2012 turns out to be like 2010, these candidates are either fighting the last war or telling primary voters what they’re eager to hear. So far, not many Floridians are focused on the Senate race or the presidential sweepstakes. In all the polls in both races the most favored candidate now is a guy named “Undecided.” This will give way as summer fades to fall and we’re looking down the barrel of the Iowa caucuses and the first primaries.

So far Hasner appears to have a lead in the race to be crowned the real and true conservative. In a campaign that mimics Rubio’s 2010 race both in ideology and strategy, Hasner is crisscrossing the state highlighting the urgency of cutting federal spending and regulation and following a strong foreign policy based on defending America’s security interests. He was the first of the candidates to endorse the Ryan plan for dealing with Medicare.

Just as Rubio’s 2010 campaign attracted the support of Florida and national conservative household names, bagging almost all of them well before Election Day, Hasner so far has collected the endorsements of conservative broadcasters Monica Crowley and Mark Levin, Red State’s Erick Erickson, and Pass the Balanced Budget Amendment Chairman Ken Blackwell.

LeMieux is angling to get back to Washington. He was appointed by former Florida Governor Charlie Crist to serve the last 16 months of the term of Mel Martinez, who resigned from his Senate seat in August 2009. During LeMieux’s short time in Washington he compiled what the ideological rating agencies deem to be a conservative voting record. In his campaign so far LeMieux has criticized Obama and Nelson for incontinent federal spending and for socialist overreaches such as Obamacare. When Crist broke wide left and became an independent during the 2010 Senate race, LeMieux made a clean and complete break with Crist and endorsed Rubio. 

But it won’t be easy for LeMieux to rid himself of the Ghost of Charlies Past. LeMieux says he rejects the leftist stands Crist took in the Senate race and before, including Crist’s 2007 attempt to saddle Florida with its own cap and trade system. But his opponents claim that LeMieux, who was Crist’s chief of staff for years, was in fact the architect of these liberal positions.

To the extent that 2012 is still a Tea Party year, and if it’s still an advantage to be an outsider, LeMieux will have to deal with the image of a Washington insider. Thursday a clutch of U.S. Senators, including John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Pat Roberts of Kansas are throwing a fund-raiser at The Monocle in Washington for LeMieux. Another sponsor of the event is Pete Rummel, finance chairman of Bob “Bob” Dole’s direction-less 1996 presidential campaign. Can you get any more establishment than this?

Haridopolos has compiled a mostly conservative record during his years in the Florida senate. Under his leadership this year the Florida senate helped deal with a $4 billion deficit in Florida’s budget. The current spending plan eliminates 4,000 state workers and obliges the state’s government school teachers to pay three percent toward their retirement. Way less than folks in the private sector must pay, but three percent more than Florida’s well-compensated government teachers were paying.

But Florida conservatives sniff that Haridopolos got far less than he could have, considering the Florida Legislature is 2-1 Republican and the governor and all cabinet members are Republican. His opponents particularly like to point out that Haridopolos was unable to get any meaningful immigration legislation.

Being senate president, and Haridopolos will continue in that post in 2012, means he will have little trouble raising campaign cash. In the first reporting quarter Haridopolos hauled in $2.6 million.

In a perfect world it wouldn’t matter, but though Haridopolos is 41 he looks 25 and sounds 16. He has a high-pitched voice that is so squeaky it sounds like his nickname should be “Sparky.” He can’t help this, and it’s not fair. But these things might cost him a few points. If he were running for student-body president he would be perfect.

So these are the guys against Nelson, who should be vulnerable. Nelson has voted for cap and trade, Obamacare, and all of the other left phantasms that Floridians consistently tell pollsters they don’t fancy. He doesn’t wear a Mao jacket to work, but he may as well. Any one of the Republican candidates would compile a much more conservative record than Nelson has in his two terms in the Senate.

But it won’t be easy. Nelson is a low-key fellow who speaks with a disarming, good-ole-boy drawl. Florida’s left-stream media insist on referring to him as a “moderate.” Looking at Nelson’s voting record, Floridians are entitled to wonder what it would take to earn the title “left-wing geek.”

Sharon Day, co-chair of the RNC and Florida’s Republican Committeewoman, told me, “There should be some price to pay for his [Nelson's] votes. We’re living with the results of those votes now. There needs to be some accountability.” 

Do these Republican candidates, singing from the conservative hymnal, mean what they say or are they just tuned in to polls and focus groups? Floridians will get a clearer picture of this in the 14 months before the state’s primaries, and nearly 17 to the general election. But the success of any one of these would almost certainly move Florida politically to the right and help stave off what Florida conservatives refer to as the dreaded purple disease.

By Charles Krauthammer

“Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” observed President Obama this week, enjoying a nice chuckle about the unhappy fate of his near-$1 trillion stimulus. To be sure, Obama has also been promoting a less amusing remedy for anemic growth and high unemployment: exports. In his 2010 State of the Union address, he proclaimed a national goal of doubling exports within five years.

One obvious way to increase exports is through free-trade agreements. But unions don’t like them. No surprise then that for two years Obama has been sitting on three free-trade agreements — with Colombia, Panama and South Korea — already negotiated by his predecessor.

Under the pressure of dire economic conditions and of the consequences of stiffing three valued allies, Obama appeared ready to relent — only to put up a last-minute roadblock. He’s demanding an expansion of Trade Adjustment Assistance — taxpayer money (beyond unemployment compensation) given to workers displaced by foreign competition, something denied to Americans rendered unemployed by domestic competition. It’s an idea of dubious fairness but nicely designed to hold up ratification, while placing blame on Republican heartlessness rather than on political sabotage by Democrats beholden to unions for the millions they pour into Democratic coffers. (A deal reportedly may be near. But the years of delay have been costly. Colombia, for example, is negotiating broad trade deals with China, including a possible Chinese-built railway to bypass the Panama Canal.)

Nothing new here. In 2009, Obama pushed through a federally run, questionably legal, bankruptcy for the auto companies that robbed first-in-line creditors in order to bail out the United Auto Workers. Elsewhere, Delta Air Lines workers have voted four times to reject unionization. A federal agency, naturally, is investigating and, notes economist Irwin Stelzer, can order still another election in the hope that it yields the answer Obama’s campaign team wants.

But Democratic fealty to unions does not stop there. Boeing has just completed a production facility in South Carolina for its new 787 Dreamliner. The National Labor Relations Board, stacked with Democrats — including one former union lawyer considered so partisan that he required a recess appointment after the Senate refused to confirm him — is trying to get the plant declared illegal. Why? Because by choosing right-to-work South Carolina, Boeing is accused of retaliating against its unionized Washington state workers for previous strikes.

In fact, Boeing has increased unionized employment by more than 2,000 at its Puget Sound plant. Moreover, the idea that a company in a unionized state can thus be prohibited from expanding into right-to-work states by a partisan regulatory body is quite insane. It violates the fundamental principle in a free-market economy that companies can move and build in response to market conditions, rather than administrative fiat. It jeopardizes the economic recovery, not only targeting America’s single largest exporter in its attempt to compete with Airbus for a huge global market, but also threatening any other company that might think of expanding in any way displeasing to unions and their NLRB patrons.

Obama has been utterly silent in the Boeing affair. Which is understood by all as tacit approval. He’s facing reelection next year. And Democrats need unions.

Of course, unions need Democrats — who deliver quite faithfully. In last year’s nationwide “shellacking” of Democrats, for example, Wisconsin gave Republicans control of both legislative chambers and elected a Republican governor who made clear his intention to rein in public-sector union power.

When the Republicans tried to do as promised, Democrats, lacking the votes, tried to block it by every extra-parliamentary maneuver short of arson. State Senate Democrats fled Wisconsin to prevent a quorum. Demonstrators filled the statehouse for days and nights on end. And when the bill finally passed nonetheless, Dane County’s Democratic district attorney went to court to have it thrown out on procedural grounds.

They found a pliant judge to invalidate the law. A famous victory, but short-lived. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the ruling, upbraiding the judge for having “usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the legislature.” The law is reinstated.

Instructive cases all, demonstrating how those who lose popular support — Democrats at the polls, unions in their declining membership — can subvert and circumvent the popular will by judicial usurpation (Wisconsin) or administrative fiat (Boeing).

The Wisconsin maneuver ultimately failed, as likely will the assault on Boeing. In the interim, however, there is collateral damage — to U.S. exports, to the larger economy, to bankruptcy law, to free trade, to a constitutional system wherein the legislatures make the laws, rather than willful judges and partisan regulators.

But what are those when there are unions to appease and elections to win?

Should Republicans run against Obama’s hyper-liberalism or his abysmal economic stewardship?

The Republicans swept November’s midterm election by making it highly ideological, a referendum on two years of hyper-liberalism — of arrogant, overreaching, intrusive government drowning in debt and running deficits of $1.5 trillion annually. It’s not complicated. To govern from the left in a center-right country where four out of five citizens are non-liberal is a prescription for electoral defeat.

Which suggested an obvious Republican strategy for 2012: Recapitulate 2010. Keep it ideological. Choose a presidential nominee who can best make the case.

But in the last few weeks, the landscape has changed. For two reasons: NY-26 and the May economic numbers.

Last month, Democrats turned the race for the 26th congressional district of New York into a referendum on Medicare, and more specifically on the Paul Ryan plan for reforming it. The Republicans lost the seat — after having held it for more than four decades.

Problem was, their candidate was weak, defensive, unschooled, and unskilled in dealing with the issue. Republicans have a year to cure that. If they can train their candidates to be just half as fluent as Ryan in defending their Medicare plan, they would be able to neutralize the issue.

But that in and of itself is a tactical victory for Democrats. Republicans are on the defensive. Democratic cynicism has worked. By deciding to do nothing about debt and entitlements, and instead to simply accuse Republicans of tossing granny off a cliff, they have given themselves an issue.

And more than just an issue. It gives President Obama the perfect opportunity to reposition himself to the center. After his midterm shellacking, he began the (ostensible) move: appointing moderates such as William Daley to high White House positions; making pro-business, anti-regulatory noises; even offering last month a token relaxation of his hard line against oil drilling.

Ostentatious but not very convincing. Now, however, the Obama pitch is stronger: Leftist? On the contrary, I bestride the center like a colossus, protecting Medicare from Republican right-wing social engineering.

It’s not that the ideological case against Obama cannot be made. Obamacare with its individual mandate remains unpopular. The near-trillion-dollar stimulus remains an albatross. Even the failed attempt at cap-and-trade — government control of energy pricing — shows Obama’s determination to fundamentally transform America. And he is sure to try again to complete his coveted European-style social-democratic project if you give him four more years.

Medicare has nonetheless partially blunted that line of ideological attack. Yet, just as the Democrats were rejoicing in the fruits of their cynicism, in came the latest economic numbers. They were awful. Housing-price declines were the worst since the 1930s. Unemployment rising again. Underemployment disastrously high. And as for chronic unemployment, the average time for finding a new job is now 40 weeks, the highest ever recorded. These numbers gravely undermine Obama’s story line that we’re in a recovery, just a bit slow and bumpy.

Suddenly, the election theme has changed. The Republican line in 2010 was: He’s a leftist. Now it is: He’s a failure. The issue is shifting from ideology to stewardship.

As in 1992, it’s the economy, with everything else a distant second. The economic numbers explain why Obama’s job approval has fallen, why the bin Laden bump disappeared so quickly, and why Mitt Romney is running even with the president. Romney is the candidate least able to carry the ideological attack against Obama — exhibit A of Obama’s hyper-liberalism is Obamacare, and Romney cannot rid himself of the similar plan he gave Massachusetts. But when it comes to being solid on economics, competent in business, and highly experienced in governance, Romney is the prohibitive front-runner.

The changing nature of the campaign is also a boost for Tim Pawlenty, the successful two-term governor of a very liberal state, and possibly for another ex-governor, Jon Huntsman, depending on who he decides to run as.

Nonetheless, despite the changed conditions, I would still prefer to see the Republican challenger make 2012 a decisive choice between two distinct visions of government. We are in the midst of a once-in-a-generation debate about the nature of the welfare state (entitlement versus safety net) and, indeed, of the social contract between citizen and state (e.g., whether Congress can mandate — compel — you to purchase whatever it wills). Let’s finish that debate. Start with Obama’s abysmal stewardship, root it in his out-of-touch social-democratic ideology, and win. That would create the strongest mandate for conservative governance since the Reagan era.

Some recent stories instruct us anew on the cardinal tenets of Obamanomics, a.k.a, pay for play the Chicago way. 

Consider first the story reviewing the rush of organizations to get exemptions from Obamacare.  So far, nearly 1,400 different entities (businesses, unions, insurers, and state and local governments), covering over three million people, have been given exemptions from the bill by Obama’s HHS Secretary Sebelius, and those waivers have a disturbing pattern.

The Obama regime clearly played the crony capitalist card in granting these waivers.  While unions represent only a small portion of the workforce (12% overall, and a trivial 7% of all private industry employees), they gave over $400 million in the 2008 election cycle to elect Democrats (especially Obama), and they have been rewarded with over half of all the waivers given out so far.  Put another way, if you are a member of a union that puts cash into Obama’s campaign coffers, you are four times more likely than the average citizen to get an exemption from the very law your corrupt, rent-seeking organization helped inflict upon an unwilling public in the first place.

Moreover, last month alone saw the Obama regime grant nearly forty exemptions to various tony nightclubs, restaurants, and hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district.  How ironic can you get: Pelosi was the loopy leftist shrew who jammed the law through the House of Representatives, cackling that we had to pass the damn thing in order to find out what was in it.  Apparently even she didn’t know what was in it, or maybe just her constituents didn’t know.

Turning to Obamanomics and taxation, it has often been observed that the jokes a person makes are always an indication of what that person deeply believes.  If that’s the case, Obama’s recent remarks in his commencement speech at Arizona State University (ASU) — when he joked about ASU’s basketball team defeating his pick in the NCAA tournament — is revealing.  He “joked” that ASU’s president and Board of Regents “will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.”

Now, as Glenn Harlan Reynolds noted in his discussion of this incident, this is a repellent and ominous joke.  Reynolds notes that the history of some recent presidents (Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon come to mind here) who used the IRS to harass opponents makes this sort of joke worse than tasteless — it threatens the already limited trust the public has in the IRS.  But it is worse than that: the joke indicates that the Chicago Way punish-our-enemies-and-reward-our-friends attitude is never far from Obama’s mind.  And the IRS has indeed been more menacing under the Obama regime’s stewardship.

Consider the recent report that the IRS is increasing its demands on small businesses. Now, small businesses are Obama’s least favorite form of business — they aren’t unionized, their principals have an annoying degree of independence, and they don’t tend to contribute much to his campaign coffers.  Well, the IRS is now demanding of small companies being audited that they turn over the entirety of their QuickBooks or other accounting software files.  In other words, the IRS is demanding that audited companies turn over not just the documents pertaining to the issues in the audit, but all files.  These would include customer lists, confidential client information, sales records, and personnel records.

Not unnaturally, small businesses are worried about the IRS being able to conduct “fishing expeditions,” trawling the data for evidence of something that might bring the IRS more money in fines and penalties.  Even worse, clients could then be targeted for investigation, which could be devastating for the viability of those small businesses.

Again, there is the authoritarian rage the Obama regime has shown after last year’s Citizen United ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court which — quelle horreur! – held that businesses have the same rights as other groups in America to spend their money to plead their cases.  Obama obviously feels that only leftist special interest groups such as unions and environmentalist organizations have this right.

The Congress, with Obama’s support, tried to overturn the ruling legislatively with the Orwellian-named DISCLOSE Act, but that failed.  So Obama has repeatedly promised to issue an executive order to the effect that all businesses bidding for government contracts must reveal the recipients of all their campaign donations — a clear effort to intimidate businesses into contributing only to “politically correct” causes, such as the Obama reelection campaign.

Moreover, as a recent piece reveals, the IRS is now involved in the attempt by the regime to suppress the free speech of opponents.  The IRS has just announced that it plans to retroactively require that political donations to certain 501(c)(4) non-profit political organizations be subject to gift taxes.  As the piece rightly notes, the gift tax has hitherto been used to stop wealthy people from escaping the estate tax by giving their assets away to relatives.  So the sudden, selective, and ex post facto use of this tool to target and intimidate donors to conservative organizations (such as Americans for Prosperity and Crossroads GPS) seems clearly political.

Also testifying to the political nature of this IRS program is the fact that the idea was first proposed by leftist advocacy groups such as Democracy 21 and liberal politicians such as Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).

Finally, we should note a sad coda to the whole crony car capitalism that was the Obama’s takeover of GM and Chrysler.  I won’t repeat the story about how the original secured creditors were stiffed in favor of the UAW, a big supporter of Obama.  But this new story discusses another group of people who got the shaft so that the UAW would score big: namely, unsecured creditors.

Overlooked in the auto company bailouts were those people who had received court judgments for harms they suffered from GM and Chrysler vehicles.  The article recounts a number of the thousands of such sad cases.  These debts were largely expunged by the bankruptcy.

To be precise, Motors Liquidation Company, the name of the bankruptcy estate for the old GM, which has as assets only 10% of the stock in the new GM, faces $3.3 billion in liabilities from 2,500 claimants, and those victims often are forced to take only 30% of what they were awarded in the form of shares in the trust.  That trust also faces other unsecured creditors (such as those who suffered from asbestos ailments, and owners of defunct dealerships).  Worse, Chrysler claimants have no recourse, because no assets were set aside for unsecured creditors.

As Professor Skeel, a bankruptcy law specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, put it, “[t]his was not a normal case. The government was deciding who was going to be taken care of and who was not. … It would have been easy to put something aside for [the victims of product liability].”  But the good professor overlooks the fact that the people harmed by the defective products made by GM and Chrysler weren’t organized into a rent-seeking block that gave tens of millions of dollars to Obama’s campaign.  The UAW — which went to great lengths to protect the drunken, incompetent, and negligent workers who produced many cars that maimed consumers — was so organized and had given the millions, so the UAW got the spoils.

Obama’s approach is clear: he employs economic policy to advance his leftist political agenda.  This is crony capitalism in its rankest, most corrupt form.  It is not worthy of even a corrupt machine-run cesspool such as Chicago, much less a nation governed by the rule of law.

What is amazing is that the various Republican candidates aren’t hammering this issue.

- Stan McHugh of CFP

It is an undeniable fact that the current administration in Washington and many members of both the House and Senate are out of control as they have been ignoring and openly defying The Constitution of the United States on a regular and repeated basis. The same is true of members of the Federal Judiciary that by legislating from the bench ignore and defy the Constitution.

If America is to survive as a nation of laws that protect the freedom of the individual citizen, something must be done to bring such people under control. Clearly the arrogance of these individuals has become such that they see themselves as being above those laws (The Constitution of the United States) that they are all sworn to protect and defend. Removal from office of those who violate their very oath of office is, without question, a just response to such action. Officials that are elected can always be removed from office at the next election, but the damage that they do by their outright unconstitutional actions while in office can take years if not generations to repair. Others are appointed, some even for life, which places them effectively outside the control of the citizens that they supposedly serve.

Although far too many people today seem to have lost track of the concept, it is a fact that this nation was established, not for the benefit of the rulers or a “ruling class” but for the protection of the freedom of the citizens. The Constitution was written by our founding fathers, not to grant certain rights to the citizens but, rather to limit the power of the Federal Government to take rights away. Even the so called “Bill of Rights” was not written for the purpose of granting rights, as the name implies, but rather to restrict and limit the power of the Federal Government, thus preventing it from infringing upon the rights of the people as enumerated.

The men who wrote The Constitution obviously knew that future laws would be written by men and that, as such, some laws would be good for the citizens and some would be bad. However, to offer some protection from bad laws, The Constitution prohibited the Federal Government from writing laws in the vast majority of cases, thus reserving that power to the individual states. There were two very valid reasons for doing this. The first was a clear knowledge of the fact that the closer any government is to those it governs, the more just such government will be. The second reason was to establish and protect a system where competition between individual states for population and the means of commerce would serve to limit the writing and enforcement of bad laws. Bad laws written at a state level affect only the citizens and or commercial interests of that particular state and those citizens and commercial interests are free to relocate to states without similar bad laws. We have all seen the exodus of citizens and businesses from highly taxed and regulated states to those without such impediments to freedom and prosperity. Bad laws written and enforced at a federal level, however, are far more dangerous as they affect the entire country not just a single state.

Clearly and simply the tenth amendment limits the powers of the Federal Government to only those powers delegated in The Constitution and reserves all others to the States and the People. However, for over a Century the Federal Government has been expanding its power at an alarming and ever increasing pace until now there is absolutely no resemblance between what exists in Washington today, and what was set forth in The Constitution by the founding fathers. In its expansion the Federal government has encroached upon and literally seized powers from the States and the people that it is specifically forbidden to have and has done so in outright defiance of The Constitution. The expansion of the Federal Government has reached a point in this country where individual liberty is no longer a protected Right as expressed in the Declaration of Independence but rather a privilege to be doled out to those in the favor of what has become a self appointed “ruling class”. We are fast losing the position of a nation governed by laws to one governed by those in power. It is time for the citizens of the United States of America to once again declare themselves to be free individuals and retake control of government, starting at the Federal level.

High crimes or misdemeanors and impeachment

The elected members of the House and Senate are charged by the Constitution with the responsibility and are provided with the authority and procedure (impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial by the Senate) for the removal from office of federal officials who have committed treason, bribery or other “high crimes and misdemeanors”. From 1789 to the present there have been a total of 44 presidents, 44 vice presidents, 1,930 Senators, 8,956 members of the House of Representatives and 112 Justices of the Supreme Court. Add to that the numerous judges from the Federal District, and Federal Appeals and fourteen other “Federal Courts of Special Jurisdiction” and the historical number of federal officials exceeds fifteen thousand (15,000) individuals.

From 1789 to date only a total of nineteen (19) federal officials have even been impeached (charged) and only seven (7) actually convicted and removed from office. All seven of those actually removed by conviction were district court judges and basically “little fish”, not being part of the Washington power structure. A few have resigned rather than face impeachment or, following impeachment to avoid conviction However, from 1789 to the present date not one single president, vice president, senator, congressman or supreme court judge has ever been removed from office by the impeachment process. Are we seriously to believe that of the thousands and thousands of federal officials employed over that length of time only sixteen (16) committed crimes that rose to the level even of impeachment let alone conviction and removal from office? What should be absolutely clear is that federal officials in Washington are and always have been unwilling and or unable to clean their own house and remove from office their fellow officials that commit treason, bribery or other “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

What exactly constitutes “high crimes or misdemeanors” for which, in addition to bribery and treason, a federal official may be tried, convicted and removed from office? Obviously “high crimes and misdemeanors” can include a variety of offenses some quite serious and some less so. The direct and intentional violation of The Constitution by any federal official up to and including the president must certainly constitute a “high crime or misdemeanor”. Although the exact wording does vary slightly between the various offices, all federal officials both elected and appointed, must swear an oath to support, uphold, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. If a direct violation of said oath to uphold the supreme law of the land does not constitute a “high crime or misdemeanor” then the entire concept of rule of law is without meaning. Without any question the direct and intentional violation of The Constitution of the United States by any federal official does constitute a “high crime” for which that official must be removed from office.

Based upon the literally nonexistent track record of the Washington power elite in policing their own ranks, the power to impeach and, upon conviction, remove from office any and all federal officials so convicted must be expanded by Constitutional Amendment to place said power in the hands, not of those in Washington, but rather in the hands of the elected officials and the citizens of the several states.

It is herein proposed that an amendment to the Constitution be written and adopted that provides a legal mechanism, external to the Federal government but with legal authority over same, to bring charges, indict and try those officials who are charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors”, most especially the violation of the Constitution. The penalty for conviction of such constitutional violation shall be the immediate and permanent removal from office of the individual so convicted, and lifetime disqualification to hold any office within the Federal government.

The following is a suggested format for what if proposed, accepted and ratified would become Amendment XXVII to the constitution of the United States. It is very important that the mechanism for the exercise these powers require considerable effort and dedication at the level of citizens and the states so that the power of this amendment be used only in cases where clear and intentional violation of the limitations of the Constitution have occurred and are ongoing. Great care must be taken to construct this amendment in such a way that it not be used as a tool for the simple overturning of legal election results or for the purpose of expanding or maintaining the power of any individual political party.

Article XXVII

Section 1

The right of the citizens of the United States to call for the removal from office of elected and or appointed officials of the federal government shall be herein guaranteed. Direct violation by any Federal official or officials of the provisions and limits of power as set forth in this Constitution shall constitute grounds for removal under this article.

Section 2

The procedure for the guarantee of this right shall exist in actions taken by the citizens through the legislatures and certain elected officials of the several states. The Federal government shall be barred from participation or influence in any way or manner in the execution of these actions but will be totally bound by law by the results thereof.

Section 3

In each individual state a call for impeachment of any federal official may be initiated by either of two distinct ways. The elected governor of each state will have the power to call for a vote of impeachment by the legislature of that state in order to initiate this procedure. The citizens of each state will also have the power through signed petition to require a vote of impeachment by the legislature of that state. The number of verified signatures on said petition must equal or exceed one fifth of the total number of votes cast in the most recent general election. When so ordered by the Governor or citizen petition the legislature of each state so ordered shall be required to convene if necessary and vote on such charges. A simple majority vote by each state’s legislature shall stand as that state’s authorization for charges to be brought against said official. Such authorization when confirmed by a simple majority of the several states shall require that charges be filed and the offending federal official be impeached.

Section 4

When impeachment is authorized in accordance with Section 3 of this article the elected governors of the several states shall be required to stand as jurors for such action. Conviction and removal from office of the federal official charged under this article shall require no less than a two thirds majority vote of the governors voting, excluding any and all abstentions.

Section 5

Conviction of any federal official under this article shall not extend further than the immediate removal from office of said official and lifetime disqualification to hold any office of the Federal Government. Such conviction and removal from office shall include immediate forfeiture of all claims to compensation of any kind whatsoever from the date of such conviction including all perquisites and pensions. Such conviction and removal from office shall not provide any immunity from indictment, trial, judgment and punishment according to federal, state or local law for any crimes committed by said official while in office

The critical need for an Amendment to the Constitution as recommended (above) becomes clearly and painfully obvious when the impeachment record of the federal government is analyzed. Using the number of 15,000 as a total for federal officials that have held office since the country was established only just over one tenth of one percent (.0013%) have ever been impeached and just under five one hundredths of one percent (.00047) removed from office. Without question the existing procedure for the removal of federal officials from office when they commit the very “high crime” of violating the Constitution that they are sworn to protect and defend is not and has never worked to any degree of effectiveness. The primary purpose of any impeachment procedure is the same as with any law. Ideally it should exist, not to punish the wrongdoer, but to serve as a warning to prevent the commission of the crime in the first place. However, when those who violate our nation’s Constitution know that their chances of actually being called to account and removed from office are less than five one hundredths of one percent there is no deterrent whatever. That must be changed.

Should the current congress fail to propose an amendment as described above, Article V of the Constitution provides the authority of calling for a Convention for proposing Amendments to the Constitution that does not require the cooperation or approval of the Federal Government. A two thirds majority of the legislatures of the several states also hold the constitutional power to call for a Constitutional Convention.

It is very important to note (see references below) that, without exception, all federal officials must swear to support (or preserve), protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. The oath for the President also includes swearing to “faithfully execute the office of President” but the Vice President, all members of Congress and all members of the Federal Judiciary are required to swear to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Federal judges must also swear to “…administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich…” Without exception all federal officials must, with slight differences in wording, swear to uphold the Constitution. By those oaths it is abundantly clear that violation of the Constitution by any federal official constitutes a “high crime” for which impeachment and, upon conviction, removal from office MUST be imposed.

References: Oaths of office for federal officials.

President: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Vice President: Although the Constitution does not provide exact wording for the Oath of Office for the Vice President the following has been in use since 1884:

“I (name) do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Senator and Congressman: Same as for Vice President.

Federal Judges including Supreme Court Justices: Federal judges are required to take two oaths.
The first oath is:

“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (office) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

The second is the same oath that members of Congress take:

“I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The present government of the United States is largely a blend of corruption and mismanagement. It no longer responds to or is trusted by a growing number of Americans. Not being a natural born citizen, Barack Hussein Obama has never been eligible for the Presidency and he may have committed felonies both before and after occupying the nation’s highest office.

Yet, despite mounting evidence, not one member of Congress or anyone in the executive or judicial branches dares to speak up or initiate an investigation.

Why is that?

Choose your noun. The Obama issue is about complicity, negligence, avarice and cowardice.

There are likely many who are complicit in a cover-up, many who were derelict in their duty to screen Obama and many selfish individuals who love their power and privileges more than their country.

Smoking out Obama will be a tough and dirty business. None of our professional politicians want to soil their hands. They will leave the hard work to others, but, when it is safe to do so, they will express their faux outrage and indignation and claim credit for saving the country.

Cowards, sycophants and the greedy are not the kind of people worthy to lead a great nation.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint defined the problem we are facing:

“Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians. As long as members of Congress have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to pay off special interest supporters, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fund-raising, relationship-building with lobbyists, and trading favors for pork; in short, amassing their own power.”

Similar opinions have also been expressed by Democrats, such as former Congresswoman Bella Abzug:

“The inside operation of Congress – the deals, the compromises, the selling out, the co-opting, the unprincipled manipulating, the self-serving career-building – is a story of such monumental decadence, I believe that if people find out about it they will demand an end to it.”

There is no better example of corruption than the current allegations against the “Princess of San Francisco”, former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and
prosecutes government corruption, announced that it has obtained documents from the Department of Defense (DOD) detailing her multiple requests for military air travel.

According to Judicial Watch, the emails from Pelosi’s staff reek of entitlement, privilege and a lack of concern about wasting taxpayer money. The former House Speaker treated the Air Force “like her personnel airline.”

That may be added to recent reports of the distribution of Obamacare waivers as possible political payoffs.

Nowadays the main activities of Congress seem to be blundering and plundering.

Theodore Roosevelt said:

“It is the duty of all citizens, irrespective of party, to denounce, and, so far as may be, to punish crimes against the public on the part of politicians or officials.”

Professional politicians may be elected by the people, but they are owned by the fat cats. It is the wealthy special interest groups for whom the Congress works and who sustain the entire professional political class.

Term limits may be the only way to break a cycle of corruption, but Congress and the lobbies strongly oppose them.

The US will not survive unless we as citizens understand that we alone are the guardians of the law and the Congress is only a vehicle for its implementation.

If we do not rise up against the usurpation of power and the endemic corruption of the professional political class, our silence will be construed as a surrender of our rights.

We must not allow Obama to run for re-election without a proper investigation of his background and the truth being revealed. If there is a conspiracy to defraud the American people, the guilty must be rooted out and punished.

Ordinary Americans must now act because the professional political class will never do so. It may become prudent to exercise our Second Amendment rights vigorously.

“Cowardice asks the question ‘Is it safe?’  Expediency asks the question ‘Is it politic?’  But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’  And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but because conscience tells one it is right.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Currently, Washington Republicans are mulling over two versions of a Balanced Budget Amendment. One, sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch and John Cornyn, would limit government spending to 20% of GDP and require a balanced budget (i.e., without a deficit) five years after the amendment is ratified. The version introduced by Sen. Mike Lee would be similar, but it would limit government spending to 18% of GDP, the lowest in decades.

Both versions, however, are fundamentally flawed and therefore utterly unacceptable. Let me explain.

Firstly, and most worryingly, both proposed amendments would effectively undo all the limitations on the federal government currently listed in the Constitution. Goodbye to the principle of enumerated prerogatives, the nondelegation doctrine, and the 9th and 10th Amendments. Both versions would effectively mean that the federal government will be allowed to meddle with, legislate on, and spend money on anything, as long as its total annual spending doesn’t exceed 18% or 20% of GDP (whose estimates it could falsify to justify higher spending).

This would allow the Congress to legislate on whatever it wants to regulate and spend vast sums of money on programs that should be reserved to the states. And guaranteeing this beast — the federal government — even 18% of GDP is obscene. It is not a limited government policy.

There would never have been any budget deficit if the Congress were spending money only on those agencies and programs authorized by the Constitution (vide Article I, Sec. 8). Therefore, the BBA is not needed.

The Departments of Education, Agriculture, HUD, Transportation, and Commerce are patently unconstitutional, as is the EPA, the SBA, the DHHS, all three big entitlement programs, subsidies for anything (including agriculture), the Davis-Bacon Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the War on Drugs, the cap-and-tax scheme, CAFE standards, renewable energy standards, ethanol production obligations, executive regulations of the economy, and all congressional and presidential drilling bans and drilling moratoriums. The Constitution does not authorize any of these things; all of the issues they pertain to are reserved by the 10th Amendment to the states and the people.

Unfortunately, instead of abolishing these agencies, programs, and regulations, most congressional Republicans are advertising the useless, unneeded BBA, which would serve as a mere figleaf. Only one GOP senator, Rand Paul, has proposed to abolish at least some of the above-mentioned unconstitutional agencies.

And this is actually the only way to balance the federal budget.

But even Senator Paul has proposed to cut federal spending by only $500 billion and to eventually bring it back to $3.5 trillion by FY2016.

Speaking of the federal budget, it needs to be underlined that the BBA is not a magic wand. Even if it’s passed and ratified, it will not automatically balance the budget. It will merely oblige the Congress to pass a balance budget — but the Congress will still have to determine how to erase the budget deficit. So the usual budget battles over whether to raise taxes (which can be done with a 66% supermajority under the BBA) or cut spending, and what spending to cut, and by how much, would still rage on.

So either way, there’s no way to avoid budget cuts. The budget deficit for FY2011 is projected to be $1.65 trillion. You can’t balance it solely with tax hikes or revenue from a rebounding economy (if it rebounds, which is the risky bet on which Sen. Paul’s balanced budget plan is based).

You have to abolish the agencies and programs listed above.

Thirdly, the BBA is not an absolute requirement. The Congress will be able to waive it and claim a national emergency due to “war” or some other hardship and pass another budget with a huge budget deficit. Currently, America is waging two (arguably three) wars, so the Congress could claim an easy excuse.

Fourthly, the BBA would, as mentioned above, allow the Congress to raise your taxes by a supermajority, and to raise the debt limit by a three-fifths majority. So it cannot protect you against tax hikes or debt limit hikes. Politicians could claim any excuse to raise taxes or the debt limit (as they’ve done numerous times). The BBA would ratify the Beltway status quo.

Finally, the spending limit included in the BBA does not compel any entitlement reform. And even if the Congress adopts the higher spending limit (20% of GDP), entitlements, which already constitute 56% of the total federal budget (and thus dwarf everything else, including the entire discretionary budget), will eat up an ever-larger share of the federal budget (and eventually the entire federal budget) at the cost of everything else, including legitimate functions of the federal government. All this absent radical entitlement reform, which is politically unfeasible right now.

To sum up, the BBA is bad news. It would eliminate all current constitutional limitations of the federal government, provide cover for the Congress to hike taxes and the debt limit, guarantee up to 20% of GDP to the federal government, and still fail to balance the budget, because the Congress could waive the Amendment’s provisions under the most banal pretext.

There is only one way to balance the budget: set priorities for the federal government, defend them firmly, and dispense with everything that is unnecessary or unconstitutional.