Conservatives are taking back the Republican Party

They may not have realized it yet, but many of the so-called "leaders" of the Republican Party have rendered themselves irrelevant. Whether it's RNC chair Michael Steele, National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. John Cornyn or one of the many state and county Party leaders that think they know better than the rank-and-file who should represent them, these alleged leaders have yet to get the message. Republicans want their party to get back to it's core principles and want candidates that represent those principles. But a harsh wake up call is coming for them and the Democrats in Washington, DC too.

When Florida's RINO governor Charlie Crist announced he was running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez, it took no time for the NRSC to endorse him. That was followed by Florida's Party chairman, Jim Greer (handpicked by Crist) attempting to stifle any potential primary opponents by invoking RNC Rule 11, which would have allowed the RPOF to endorse Crist in the primary and use RPOF resources to win the primary. This would have resulted in the rank-and-file members of the Party having no input on our nominee. It would have resulted in conservatives being bypassed and yet another "moderate" Republican joining the ranks of Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham in the U.S. Senate. Fortunately this atrocity was prevented by one woman: Florida State Committeewoman and RNC Secretary, Sharon Day. Her efforts have allowed Marco Rubio to run against Crist and promote the conservative principles that GOP voters so desperately want.

Conservatives nationwide are taking back the Republican Party one district at a time. Grassroots campaigns are bringing ordinary people into politics for the first time and propelling them to do the extraordinary, to defeat incumbents from both sides of the aisle and defy the party machine that many feel has betrayed them. I see it everyday when I read the posts of my friends on Facebook and the headlines in the news. The most visible example of this phenomenon is the race in NY CD-23 where conservative candidate Doug Hoffman is overtaking his GOP opponent and has garnered the endorsements of prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty and Fred Thompson. But there are also independent candidates running all over the nation for everything from school board to the US Senate. In Connecticut for example Vincent Forras is running for the Senate as an independent-conservative candidate against Chris Dodd.

The next major test for conservatives and the GOP will be in February or March of 2010, here in South Florida's 19th Congressional District where Republican candidate Edward Lynch will be running in a special election. With the resignation of the Democrat incumbent, who has essentially picked his successor, this race should draw national attention.

Many observers think that this is an easy win for the Democrats, after all it is a heavily Democrat district, but they're missing the big picture. While the Democrat, Deutsch, is technically not an incumbent, he is a current state senator and a supporter of the same unpopular policies as his predecessor and President Obama. In addition the incumbent, Robert Wexler, resigned under a cloud of ethical and criminal allegations which may stain Deutsch as well.

The Democrats will pull out all the stops to keep District 19 from falling to the GOP. There are already rumors that Obama will come to campaign for this seat. But as we've seen in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races Obama can stump for a candidate 3 or 4 times and still not turn the tide.

This is still a center-right country and even in a blue district, voters don't necessarily vote for tax and spend liberals that are weak on national defense and illegal-immigration. The ground swell of support for the conservative-Republican, Edward Lynch is amazing and bodes well for the future not just of this race, but of all the races in the 2010 election cycle. Lynch is a businessman who has never held political office. He is the kind of candidate that will flourish at this time in history.

Many voters are more conservative than they realize. This is evidenced by the fact that when our local GOP congressional candidates speak to the public, without mentioning their party affiliation, people agree with what they're saying, but have to ask what party they belong to.

Conservatives are taking back the Republican Party, across the nation, one district and one election at a time. If Michael Steele and the other "leaders" of the GOP don't get that message, they'll be left behind.

Young Republicans have huge stake in healthcare debate

As the debate over the Reid/Pelosi/Obama government-run healthcare program has raged all summer and into the fall, the demographic group that has been most engaged and targeted has been the elderly. Medicare recipients have been rightly concerned about how the Democrat's plan would affect them. We all know that Obama has promised to cut $500 billion in "fraud and waste" from Medicare to pay for his plan. Of course this is ridiculous on it's face. If there is in fact that much fraud and waste in Medicare, then logically that money should be used to prevent the program from going bankrupt. If the government is actually capable of doing away with all this fraud and waste, then why haven't they done it yet? The truth is the $500 billion will be cut by reducing reimbursements to doctors and other providers. The result of this will be less doctors and facilities that are willing to accept Medicare and in turn rationing of care.

What has been largely missing from the discussion has been what the impact of this legislation will be on young people. As the Democrat's plans currently read, everyone will be required to purchase health insurance or pay a fine. In addition, a mere catastrophic coverage plan won't be adequate to meet the government mandate. The result of this requirement will be that the young and presumably healthy will be required to pay for the care of those of us that are between the ages of 35 and 55.

Young Republicans and independents have a huge stake in the healthcare debate, but have been ignored completely. We're talking about people just starting out in their adult lives. These are young people working at what may be their first, entry level jobs. Many may be saddled with student loans and be on tight budgets. Shouldn't they have the freedom to choose not to purchase health insurance, that they likely won't make much use of, so that they can balance their household budgets? What about the young Democrats? Rumor has it that they want their "free" healthcare and they want it now. So grandma and grandpa, kiss your Medicare goodbye. Shortsighted? You betcha! So it falls to young GOP and independent voters to take a stand. They need to ask their senators and representatives, "Where in the Constitution does it grant the Federal Government the power to mandate that citizens purchase healthcare insurance?" This mandate may require young Americans to pay up to $1000 a year if they choose not to purchase insurance. Does that sound like a "tax" on people earning less than $250,000 a year to you?

We have conservative candidates here in South Florida that will oppose the mutual agenda of Reid, Pelosi and Obama. Marco Rubio, Allen West, Robert Lowry and Edward Lynch, to name just a few, are all conservative candidates that know there are better ways to fix our healthcare insurance problems, without destroying the best healthcare system in the world. Young Republicans need to get engaged and support these candidates. The stakes for young adults are at least as great as for the elderly, probably even greater.

Broward and Palm Beach RECs back conservative candidates in 2010.

Last night I attended my first meeting of the Broward Republican Executive Committee (BREC). As a member of the Palm Beach REC I was interested to see the way another county ran their meetings. In addition I attended the meeting as a member of the Lynch for Congress campaign and because former Speaker of the Florida House and current U.S. Senate candidate, Marco Rubio was scheduled to speak to the group in advance of their straw poll.

The meeting started on time and there were approximately 400 people in attendance. Based on what people that attend BREC meetings regularly said, I'd estimate that about half the crowd was present specifically to hear Marco speak. Rubio spoke for about 10-12 minutes, talking about the conservative principles that the GOP needs to get back to if we're going to be successful in taking back the U.S. House and Senate in 2010. He was very well received and got several standing ovations. I was disappointed that he didn't speak longer or take any questions from the group. I learned later that Marco had been asked to limit his remarks and not take questions due to the long list of agenda items on the BREC schedule.

After Marco Rubio finished speaking he slipped out a side door and took time to speak with supporters, shake hands, take pictures and speak to the media. He was very generous with his time and patiently listened to and answered every question in his usual common sense way. Having interviewed Marco on my BlogTalkRadio.com Internet radio show; Conservative Republican Forum and spoken to him on the phone, I was pleased to finally get to meet him in person and shake his hand.

The next speaker at the BREC meeting was candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida CD-19, Edward Lynch. Ed is a true conservative, a businessman and a tireless fighter. He is the GOP frontrunner for the nomination and ran against Robert Wexler in the 2008 election. Ed gave one of his usual fiery speeches and showed why he's the man to beat in this race. The crowd responded very favorably to his remarks.

Edward Lynch and his campaign team have been working and fighting to defeat Robert Wexler for two years. Their efforts achieved what we all wanted, Wexler has resigned. Now we have a special election (probably in February or March) against Florida State Senator Ted Deutsch and we have GOP latecomers to the race trying, not just to follow the trail that the Lynch Campaign has blazed, but trying to take credit for Wexler's resignation.

One thing that both the Palm Beach and Broward RECs have in common is that our members recognize we're in an uphill battle in District 19, two-thirds of which is in Palm Beach County with the remaining third in Broward County. The Democrats are smart enough to avoid a contentious special primary. The Democrats outnumber the GOP in Florida Congressional District 19, a contentious special primary will not lead us to victory.

It's time for the Republican Party to come together behind Edward Lynch in the special election. If Joe Budd and Curt Price want to run against Lynch in the November general election, they should do that. But to waste money and resources in a special election primary would be folly. Ed Lynch is the GOP frontrunner because he's earned that position. Ed may have opponents, but he has no rivals!

Palm Beach County Straw Poll Was Never In Doubt

The winner of the Palm Beach County REC straw poll was never in doubt. The vote took place on Wed. Oct. 14 but you could see what the results were going to be 2 months ago.

The results: Marco Rubio 90, Crist 17, Bob Smith 11, Marion Thorpe 4.

At the August meeting of the PBC REC Crist narrowly avoided censure, by just one vote. Even those that argued against censure were not fans of Governor Crist. I myself argued that while I was unhappy with Crist's performance as Florida's Governor and as the "leader" of the State Party, censure was an inappropriate solution to a political disagreement. I thought that the straw poll was the place to express my displeasure with our small "r" republican governor. RPOF Chairman Greer and Crist are seeing the one-sided results of the 9 straw polls that have now been held. But for some reason, like many establishment politicians, they aren't getting the message that the base of the Party is sending. Maybe when Charlie loses straw polls in Broward and Pinellas he'll see the light. What he ought to do is withdraw from the Senate race and go back to finishing his term as governor and then run for reelection. He needs to support actively and wholeheartedly our congressional nominees in all districts. He also needs to back the Party's nominee for US Senate. As the man whose face graces the RPOF membership card, I'd say Governor Crist sees himself as the leader of the State GOP. If that's the case, he needs to act the part. Only then can Crist run for higher office with grassroots support.

This could be a rare case of a situation where the person running for higher office will be dependent on the results of local races for their future success. The Governor could find that his fortunes could hinge on the success or failure of a handful of Florida's US House candidates. People like Robert Lowry, Allen West and Edward Lynch may hold Charlie Crist's political fate in their hands.

Wexler to Resign.

Congressman Robert Wexler (D) FL-19 will hold a news conference tomorrow to announce he is stepping down from the House seat he's held for 17 years. His top opponent, Republican candidate Edward Lynch will hold a news conference immediately after Wexler's. Wexler is expect to say he's resigning to take a job with the United States Agency for International Development. It's more likely that he's resigning due to a federal investigation into his campaign finances and questions regarding Wexler's residency, or lack thereof, in Florida. Governor Charlie Crist will have to call for a special election to fill the seat here in Palm Beach County.

Stay tuned for more as it develops!

If Obama Was Noble He'd Have Declined The Nobel.

Yesterday much of the world was shocked and astounded when the Nobel Foundation awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the sitting President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama. The Foundation gave the award to Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". It should be noted that President Obama was nominated for this award only 12 days after he took office in January of this year. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that people on both sides of the political spectrum were shocked that he had won. Even liberals had to admit that Obama had won the award for not being George W. Bush. As author and columnist S.E. Cupp Tweeted yesterday, “I've literally done JUST as much for world peace as Barack Obama. Which is nothing. But I ain't got no stinking Nobel Peace Prize.” Just what exactly had President Obama done 12 days into his presidency to deserve this nomination? For that matter, what has he done to date to deserve it?

To be sure our president has given many speeches talking about peace. For instance, he’s talked about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which apparently will be achieved by the Israelis surrendering land to the Palestinians that would literally cut their nation in half to give the Palestinians a contiguous state and by the Israelis ceasing the building of settlements, all while they continue to absorb rocket attacks from land in Gaza that they already surrendered in the name of peace. President Obama also gave a long and apologetic speech in Cairo where he equated the plight of the Palestinians that have been displaced to the Holocaust of 6 million Jews during WWII and attempted to rewrite world history. He apologized for every wrong the United States has committed, real or imagined, for the last 60 years. He then proceeded to absolve Arabs and Muslims of any wrong doing, even against their own people, especially against women and Christians. The president most recently spoke at the United Nations, both at the General Assembly and the Security Council, where in the most pompous and naïve terms, he expounded on world peace, nuclear disarmament, adherence to International Law and how his election as President of the United States was somehow supposed to bring all this about.

Meanwhile, North Korea continues to test short and medium range ballistic missiles, ignoring international law and sanctions. Iran continues to test it’s ballistic missiles and build it’s nuclear program as well, even getting caught with a second covert nuclear facility. The Taliban is resurgent and Obama waffles on just what his strategy and tactics will be in Afghanistan. His handpicked general, General Stanley McChrystal had to mention on 60 Minutes that he’d only spoken to the Commander-in-Chief once in the past 70 days and leak his assessment and request for 40,000 additional troops in order to get 25 whole minutes of face time with Obama. This only occurred because the president was on route to Copenhagen to shill for the 2016 Olympics to be in Chicago, an effort that was a failure and diminished the office of the President of the United States. This 25-minute meeting, by most accounts, wasn’t even a discussion of General McChrystal’s assessment and troop request. Instead, it was Obama dressing down his field commander for embarrassing him the media. It wasn’t until Obama returned from his Olympic defeat that he finally began to address the Afghan situation. And what came out of a week of discussions with his War Council that included VP Biden, Secretary of State Clinton, Defense Secretary Gates, National Security Advisor Jones, CIA Chief Panetta, General Petreaus and General McChrystal? No decision on troops, tactics or strategy, but we did get a statement that the President was willing to accept limited Taliban participation in the Afghan Government. So I guess the women of Afghanistan won’t be expecting much peace. If the Taliban is allowed to run portions of Afghanistan and reinstate Sharia Law, women will be banned from going to school and will be subjected to stoning for myriad offenses. Doesn’t that seem like an award winning policy to you?

In doing some research into the past winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, I came to the conclusion that it is often times an award given for good intentions, or to make political statements. To be sure there have been extremely worthy recipients. Most notably: President Theodore Roosevelt for negotiating the Russo-Japanese Peace Treaty, the Committee of the International Red Cross, Albert Schweitzer, George Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., Elie Weisel, Mother Teresa, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin.

But the award has also been bestowed on such dubious winners as: Woodrow Wilson who created the worthless League of Nations and helped negotiate the Treaty of Versailles. The League failed to prevent Japanese Expansion or atrocities in China and the Treaty of Versailles with it’s punitive penalties against Germany is widely credited with helping to facilitate the rise of Adolf Hitler to power. In more recent years, the award was given to such people as Yassar Arafat, who was a terrorist responsible for the murders of untold numbers of Israelis and Americans and was likely responsible for the assassination of Anwar Saddat. It was also awarded to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who presided during the Oil for Food scandal and the continuing genocide in Darfur. It was also awarded to former-President Jimmy Carter, one of our worst presidents and an anti-Semite and of course to former-Vice President Al Gore for making a propaganda film about man-made Global Warming that was so fraught with inaccuracies and factual omissions that a British court ruled it couldn’t be shown to school children without factual corrections and counter arguments being included.

President Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the award. But apparently he believes he should accept the award, as he will be making yet another international trip at taxpayer expense, to Olso on December 10^th to accept the Prize and the $1.4 million dollars, which he says will be donated to charity. I guess the best we can hope for is that he doesn’t donate it to ACORN.

"O" Can Blame it on Rio.

On Thursday the triple O’threat of Oprah, Michelle Obama and the “One” Barack Obama jetted to Copenhagen, Denmark to try to charm the International Olympic Committee into giving the 2016 Games to the O’Trio’s home town of Chicago, Illinois. Oprah and Michelle wined and dined the committee members and later the President arrived to make his pitch. Michelle made a heartfelt speech in which she said, "Some of my best memories are sitting on my dad's lap, cheering on Olga and Nadia, Carl Lewis and others for their brilliance and perfection…” Of course when Carl Lewis participated in the Olympics the First Lady was in her 20’s, but we’ll let that pass. Maybe her dad's lap was bigger than we think. But most of her speech, like that of her husband’s, which followed hers, was about her. She said “I” this, "me" that and “my” that over and over, making the proposed Chicago Olympics not about the City of Chicago, or it’s people, but about the Obamas. Whether this obsessive self-centered diatribe was intentional or just a natural inclination of the Obamas I can’t say for certain, but it was ironically correct. Had the Windy City received the nod from the IOC it wouldn’t have been the taxpayers of Chicago that would have profited. No, from the beginning, the winners of Chicago 2016 would have been the Obamas and their cronies. The Obamas would have had a moral and political victory while Mayor Daley, Valerie Jarrett, their real estate developer friends and scores of others in the Chicago Democrat machine would have been the ones to make big money, while the taxpayers of Chicago got soaked for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Historically, most cities that host the Olympic games lose money. Sydney, Australia and Atlanta, Georgia are just two recent cities that lost millions all for the “prestige” of hosting the vaunted international competitions. Calgary, Canada where the 2010 Winter Games are to be held, is already deep in the financial hole and has used up 98% of it’s reserve fund with months yet to go before the games begin.

Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley originally said that taxpayers wouldn’t have to foot the bill for the Games. Then he amended that a bit and said that Chicago’s taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay for them. That was an interesting change in phrasing since, according to reporting by Michelle Malkin, Valerie Jarrett (also known as Obama’s other brain) who was the unofficial White House Olympic Czar, had already arranged a meeting for herself and Chicago 2016 committee member Lori Healey with the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development to arrange HUD loans for the construction of the Olympic Village. So it seems that, in fact, the American Taxpayers (including those in Chicago) would have been stuck paying for at least a portion of the Chicago Olympics, had they come to pass. Also of note is that Valerie Jarrett may not have completely divested herself of her shares in Habitat Company, a development company that was bidding to build the Olympic Village.

In the end, the International Olympic Committee dropped Chicago in the first round of the final four, much to the shock and dismay of the O’Trio and their followers. In the aftermath of the defeat President Obama, his ego bruised, congratulated the winning city of Rio DeJaneiro and tried to get back to pushing his healthcare agenda on the nation. He and his fringe media allies, completely ignored the fact that he had spent millions of US Taxpayer dollars to fly to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC, something no American President had done before. He and they dismissed the fact that at a time when we’re fighting two wars, unemployment is nearing 10% nationally, the economy is in trouble and his healthcare plan is on life support, he dropped everything to shill for his adopted hometown and his political cronies. But others like US Senator Rowland Burris (D) IL, appointed by disgraced ex-Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill Obama’s vacated seat, rather than criticize Obama for wasting time and diminishing the prestige of the presidency, blamed former President George W. Bush for Chicago’s defeat. He indicated that Bush had hurt the image of the United States in the international community and that that ultimately was what caused the IOC to vote against Chicago.

I look at it a bit differently. I tend to agree with Rush Limbaugh, who remarked that perhaps it was President Obama’s “apology tour” that hurt Chicago’s chances. After all, Obama spent the past 9 months telling the world what a terrible and arrogant nation we are. Why would the IOC want to grant what they consider to be an honor on such an "unworthy" country? They probably decided that if they were going to let a city that's riddled with crime and corruption host the Games, they might as well give to Rio DeJaneiro, a city in South America where the Olympics have never been held. To quote the title of a mediocre Michael Caine movie, “Blame it on Rio”.