America Has a Perfect Storm of Opportunity to Save Herself From the RINOs in the GOP

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was an attempt to deal with a problem that threatened to rip America apart, slavery. Although it didn’t address the underlying institution itself, it banned new states north of Missouri’s southern border from joining the union as slave states.

The delicate balance lasted until repealed by the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854.

Although not explicit, the Act potentially opened up all of the west to slavery. For the north this was simply untenable and the result was the creation of the Republican Party, which formed in 1854 in the midst of the debate.

Of course, both were basically band aids over the real trauma that was destroying the nation, slavery.

The Republican Party was essentially the combination of the remnants of the Whig Party and elements of other peripheral parties. Six years later Abraham Lincoln would be elected the nation’s first Republican president. The party would go on to dominate much of American politics for the next half century.

In 1854 the Republican party came about as the result of America finally having to face a cancer that had been gnawing at it’s core since its foundation. In 2025 it should die for the same reason.

The cancer today is not slavery in the literal sense, but it is slavery nonetheless. In this case it isn’t blacks being held in bondage because of the color of their skin, but rather citizens being held in financial bondage by politicians who have no problem entombing them in a debtor’s prison from which escape is impossible.

The Republicans had a perfect storm of opportunity in 2025. They had just taken back the Senate, they held the House and on January 20^th they took control of the White House. Not only that, they had perhaps the most motivated electorate in a century or more. The tens of millions of Americans who watched as the 2020 election was stolen and then suffered through four years of anti American and anti-common sense policies were ready to take back their country. And they did.

What’s more, this highly motivated electorate spent the first two months of the new administration watching as the Elon Musk led DOGE revealed the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars of waste fraud and abuse everywhere from the Treasury Department to USAID to the Pentagon and elsewhere.

With the new sheriff in town these voters expected that things were going to be different.

Not so much…

No, the Republicans, the party America hired to actually codify the savings and bring some order to federal profligacy showed themselves to be derelict, indeed borderline treasonous the first chance they were given. 

While we’re being told the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB) is a good deal and it cuts spending, that’s simply a lie. Indeed it increases spending and adds trillions to the national debt.

In what seems like record time the Republican party has gone from the party leading America in a new direction to the Go Along to Get Along party. Indeed, coming to power with promises to cut spending, get the federal government under control and to slash deficits, they’re doing virtually none of that. America took the red pill and discovered that it was really a blue pill dipped in food coloring.

The BBB is nothing less than treasonous. It does nothing to address America’s existential threat: Federal spending and deficits. Today America’s national debt stands at over $36 trillion, or over 120% of GDP, the highest level on record. Of that $36 trillion, $29 trillion has accumulated since 2000, 24 years during which the GOP held the presidency for 12 years, the House for 16, the Senate for 10, and all three for 6. Regardless, the spending seems to always go up and the deficits continue to grow until today where every single American, from baby to centenarian, is on the hook for $102,000. That, in a nation where the average household income is $80,000.

And yet the Republicans, the party that’s supposed to represent financial responsibility has presented America with a budget that basically spends like a drunken sailor.

To put this in perspective, one merely needs to recognize that the Republicans had as their number one cheerleader for the last year the world’s richest and most successful man but with the presentation of this “disgusting abomination” they have made a literal enemy out of him. Addressing the Republican treachery head on, Musk suggested “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people.”

Simply put, the Grand Old Party is grand no more. It is simply Democrat lite and should therefore sent to the dustbin of history.

Of course as we learned with Teddy Roosevelt and H. Ross Perot, third parties don’t work in the United States. The reality is, a new party doesn’t need to be started from scratch. Just as the GOP was built on the remnants of the Whig Party, a new party could be carved out of the decomposing husk of the GOP. Just look to how well that treacherous John Cornyn is doing down in Texas to understand how it’s possible to send swamp rats out to pasture.

And Elon Musk should lead this charge.  Although currently on the outs with President Trump, in reality the two have far in common than not. He should spearhead the creation of this new party, one where financial discipline is, if not the raison d'etre, is a core element beyond compromise.  And the DOGE team has given them more than enough to work with.  Much like Newt Gingrich did in 1994 with his Contract with America, Musk et. al. should build on the DOGE recommendations and put together a new Contract of items that most Americans can agree on and use that to eviscerate the RINO wing of the GOP. 

Most Americans don’t like thousand page omnibus bills that no one can read and fewer can understand.  This new Contract should promise single department bills written in plain English.  Americans don’t like seeing budgets that go up year to year with seemingly zero correlation to the agency’s success or failure.  This new Contract should propose zero based budgeting so that agencies and departments have to make the case for their spending every year or every other year.

These and other no-nonsense policies will no doubt raise the ire of virtually the entire Democrat party, most of the bureaucracy and of course the swamp Republicans.  But they would likely resonate not only with average Republican voters, but they would likely appeal to many of the non-deranged elements of the Democrat party who are simply exhausted with the status quo of dysfunction.  And now is the time, before it’s too late.

One hundred and thirty five years ago slavery was an existential threat to the survival of the United States and it took a war and 600,000 lives to defeat. Debt figures on an accounting sheet might not sound like an existential threat, but make no mistake, they are. Whether Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic or third century Rome, spending matters, deficits matter, numbers on an accounting sheet can eventually turn deadly. When this debt bubble bursts America will come apart at the seams and it will make the collapse of Venezuela look like a walk in the park.

But it doesn’t have to be. History doesn’t often pair a highly motivated public with the world’s richest man on the same side of an issue so clearly in need of fixing. It has now and we should seize the opportunity and take what little good that remains of the GOP and build upon it a new party that puts the needs of America above those of grifting, power obsessed politicians. That’s the kind of change Americans voted for.

Follow Vince on X at @ImperfectUSA

DOGE, the Big Beautiful Bill and the 'Rich Men North of Richmond

 I was under the illusion that with Donald Trump back in charge and the wind at his back Washington Republicans might actually take off the gloves and say eff-it and take on the swamp.  With the failures inherent in the Big Beautiful Bill, it appears I was wrong.  I don’t blame Trump. This abysmal betrayal of the American people was written in the halls of Congress… 

The Republicans in Congress talk a good game, but when it comes to actually doing what they say they’re going to do, it turns out they’re really snake oil salesmen. Not that this is new.  Remember when they ran on killing Obamacare throughout Obama’s presidency then bungled it when Trump became president?

We’re now watching that same treachery play itself out in real time, and it involves the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that just passed the House. This monstrosity ostensibly does a number of good things.  It extends Trump’s 2017 taxes that were set to expire, it increases spending on border security and apparently it cuts federal support for Planned Parenthood.  All of these are good things… but they’re the equivalent of trying to save the Titanic by emptying water over the side one bucket at a time while a thousand gallons of water pour into the hull every second. 

What this bill doesn’t do is cut spending nor cut the deficit.  Indeed, it puts the deficit on overdrive, just as interest rates on government debt seem to be heading upward. The president’s advisor Steven Miller (who is one of the smartest guys in Washington) pushes back, by pointing out that Reagan’s tax cuts weren’t balanced by spending cuts.  True, but then Reagan didn't have, if I remember correctly, a national debt 125% the size of the GDP that needed to be serviced.

A small part of this problem has to do with the calendar.  The writing of this budget began back in December after it became clear the GOP would have both houses but before they were technically in complete control.  As such, this Frankenstein started being put together long before DOGE started showcasing exactly how dysfunctional the federal government is.  But that’s no excuse.  It’s been over 4 months since the Elon Musk managed vehicle started highlighting problems.

This One Big Beautiful Bill Act demonstrates exactly why the federal government is as screwed up as it is. They say that you can’t turn around a ship on a dime, and that’s true.  But there’s a difference between turning on a dime and setting a course, full speed ahead, for the closest iceberg. 

This bill literally adds $2.5 trillion to the government’s debt and runs a deficit larger than Biden’s last one!  At the same time it basically allows the government to go on, business as usual.  There are no major cuts to spending.  There are no elimination of departments.  There is no substantial paring of regulation.  There’s basically the same budget compiled by the Democrats, RINOs and the administrative state every year with infinitesimal changes except for the taxes.

This bill doesn’t reflect the will of the people, it reflects the will of the establishment and the swamp. 

If Congress really wanted to fix the budget they’d take to heart many of the recommendations and revelations from DOGE, as well as codify much of what Trump has done or tried to do via Executive Orders. Hell, it doesn’t even eliminate the Department of Education, something Trump explicitly ran on. 

This bill cuts $4 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, Joe Biden’s attempt to get everything, including the kitchen sink into the budget, including green energy, social spending and taxes on the rich.  Four billion sounds like a lot until you understand that the IRA is a $1.4 trillion boondoggle. 

The reality is, 2/3 of the federal budget, fully $4 trillion out of $6 trillion is wealth redistribution.  Even if you argue that Social Security isn’t that, which is mostly true, and remove it, you’re still looking at almost half the federal budget being wealth distribution of one sort or another.  How much of that is waste, fraud and abuse? 

Elon Musk had initially suggested that he thought $2 Trillion could be cut from the budget. He lowered that target to $1 Trillion and in the first 4 months of the year DOGE has done a yeoman’s job and cut $170 billion of waste. And that’s with just 100 people on staff and facing a bureaucracy of literally millions who scheme and obfuscate at every turn in order to maintain the cash pipeline.  Imagine how much a DOGE team of 1,000 could do!

But more than actual cuts, DOGE recommended things like personnel cuts, cutting green energy subsidies and of course cutting regulation.  But relatively little is actually being codified in law. That’s despite the fact that 67% of Americans support DOGE cuts of at least $1 trillion, 77% support looking at the entirety of the budget to find savings and 78% support cutting spending to balance the budget.  Indeed, so little is being cut that Elon Musk has announced that he will be stepping back to refocus his efforts on his companies and playing a much smaller role in political spending.    

Inspired by promises to cut spending, taxes and regulation, MAGA voters powered Republicans to win the White House, take the Senate and retain the House. They had the richest and possibly the smartest man in the world not only on their side, but knee deep in funding them, getting them elected and working around the clock to ferret out corruption and fraud in government. Plus, every day seemed to shine more light on the corruption of Democrat / swamp machine.  As a result of all of this Republicans found themselves the beneficiaries of the most passionate electorate America may have ever seen. They were on top of the world.  And what did they do with all of this momentum? Worse than nothing, they gave us Democrat lite.

No major regulatory cuts.  No major cuts to wealth redistribution programs. No departments and few programs actually eliminated. No reining in of the imperial judiciary seeking to derail Trump at every turn.  No, rather than listen to voters and take a sledgehammer to the twin albatross of regulation and spending they use a dull putty knife to create the illusion of actual progress.

Of course we all know why nothing ever changes in Washington. Politicians go to DC and most get sucked into the Georgetown cocktail party scene grift, into being invited to pontificate on Sunday morning shows and give speeches to groups of deep pocketed donors from industries over whom them hold a sword of Damocles.

The fact that Donald Trump didn’t care about any of that, wasn’t swayed by any of that is one of the things that made him so appealing. That’s the reason MAGA put him back in the White House…

Unfortunately for the country however, the GOP in Congress is led by swamp weasels Mike Johnson and John Thune, and Trump is Gulliver to their Lilliputians. They have no real interest in upsetting the grift applecart despite what America wants.  They put America First lipstick on a Business as Usual pig and call it progress.  If the GOP loses Congress next year, look no farther than its leadership.  Like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnel before them, they are more interested in the trappings of leadership than actually solving America’s problems. Rich Men North of Richmond indeed.

The Cowardly GOP Grifters - Feigning Leadership and Losing America

Last week Tucker Carlson showcased the fact that the GOP is doing its best to lose November’s election.

He showed a clip of the Mitch McConnell admitting that the GOP would likely not take the Senate. McConnell and the rest of leadership don’t want to win. Carlson rightly suggested if the GOP really wanted to win, they’d run on crime and immigration.  While the economy is reportedly voter’s number one issue, in reality it’s what goes on in their neighborhoods and on their streets that matter.  If Americans don’t feel safe walking down their streets or in their homes or if they sit in the drive-thru lines because they’re scared to go into a restaurant or store, nothing else matters… not the economy, abortion, gender rights, or Ukraine. 

But the GOP doesn’t care.  They’re complaining about Biden’s spending, bemoaning government overreach and sanctioning Putin. Those issues aren’t going to return the GOP to power.  But Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and Ronna McDaniel don’t care about returning to power.  Their lives don’t change if the GOP doesn’t take back the Congress. They’ll still rule their little fiefdoms, still be invited to Georgetown cocktail parties and be feted by lobbyists, and of course they’ll still be on Sunday morning shows to feign outrage for the latest Democrat policy.

For these grifters the only difference between winning and losing in November is having to actually work for the American people… something they’re loathe to do.

But for the average American, the difference between winning and losing in November is literally life and death, lawlessness or civil society.

The world wouldn’t change overnight on the 8^th, but what could happen is that the people who control the purse strings, who are supposed to actually make the laws could change. Just like in 1994.

And that’s a big deal because the people running America today are the same people who have been running America’s biggest cities into the ground for decades.  And every American, whether they live in the San Francisco, Manhattan or Kalamazoo, MI recognizes that America’s coming apart at the seams.  From not being able to go a day without seeing another video of a pack of thugs beating a cab driver in the street or attacking an employee in a restaurant to watching a seemingly endless parade of homeless people punching random strangers, Americans are weary.  From staring with disbelief as a gang of hoodlums ransack a convenience store with impunity to watching video after video of people cussing at or otherwise attacking the police, Americans are watching the collapse of our society.

And this is the environment where Mitch McConnell whines about the quality of the GOP candidates.  The problem isn’t Dr. Oz or Eric Schmitt or Herschel Walker, it’s that the GOP leadership that is not doing its job. Where is Newt Gingrich when we need him?  The reality is, this election has been tailor made for the GOP, but that’s not the way it’s shaping up because McConnell, McCarthy, McDaniel and their puppeteer, the hack Frank Luntz – who happens to be McCarthy’s roommate or landlord or whatever – have decided they don’t want to actually save America, they’d rather sit back in the comfort of their minority position and pretend to care while enjoying the perks of “leadership”.

America needs warriors willing to brave the slings and arrows of the chattering classes, the leftist media, the Washington establishment and, most of all, the fascist NGO influencers who employ mobs on the streets to intimidate citizens and spineless CEOs and coerce into submission anyone who doesn’t agree with their agendas. 

If the GOP really wanted to win in November, we’d see a new ad every single day showcasing the violence going on in our streets along with pictures of some thug who’s just assaulted a random senior as he’s released without bail by a George Soros funded district attorney.  We’d see videos of illegals storming the border.  At the end of every single ad would be a simple tagline:  “If you want more of this, please vote for my Democrat opponent...  If you want someone who’s going to do something about crime and the quality of American life, vote for me.” (Helpfully I've created the nearby video to give him an idea of what it might look like... )

It’s that simple.  There are myriad problems caused by the Democrats, but those issues can’t be addressed without majorities, and none of them will flip Congress in November. But images of blood in the streets will.  A daily total of national Fentanyl deaths will.  Images of career criminals released on bail after having pummeled some teenager into unconsciousness will, and stories of illegal immigrants overwhelming communities will.  Imagine if Dr. Oz ran daily ads with videos showcasing Philadelphia’s violence rather than his clownish grocery store disaster?  No one in Pennsylvania cares about the price of guacamole, but they care about getting shot or stabbed in their own neighborhoods.

Not that I expect the GOP leadership to create such a Contract with America Deux. They’re cowards and grifters.  Such a campaign would require backbone against the predictable cries of “racism” that would emerge because most of the videos involve young black hoodlums and thugs. They would be branded racists by the race pimps and the professional victimization industry. 

Those attacks would come as surely as night follows day.  But so what?  It just happens to be the case that most of the crimes we see involve black perps freed from the justice system in the name of “equity”.  If there are similar videos of white perps they should be shown too.  The reality is, if you’re a victim of murder or rape it doesn’t matter what the criminal looks like.  Is a dead black child any more or less dead because his attacker was black or white?  No. Crime is off the charts not because the pigment of anyone’s skin, but because of the policies of the Democrat party. 

The GOP needs to understand their constituency is not the criminal class of any race.  Their constituency is the average American of every race.  It’s Americans who want to send their kids to school without them having to step over junkies or human feces.  It’s the average American who wants to go to work without fearing getting shot or robbed before making it home. 

The rule of law and responsibility for one’s actions are foundations of a civilized society. Without them there is no civilized society. That’s what we’re experiencing with Democrats in charge, and it seems like the GOP leadership is OK with that. We, however, are not.  This is the hill to die on, this is hill upon which America will either recover or slide into the abyss of chaos and tyranny…

We cannot depend on the current GOP “leaders” to fight this fight. This is going to have to come from the candidates themselves and some new Gingrich character to nationalize this election and help push the feckless GOP across the finish line. McConnell may not be capable of actually leading the country out of this morass, but at least with a GOP majority in November the collapse into a dystopian nightmare can be slowed until people of character can replace him. But being in the majority is the first step, and that will take candidates with the courage to stand up and fight for the average American, regardless of the invective that would surely be headed their way…

When the Republic is on the Line Will the GOP be the Party of Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill?

The GOP today is the party of Donald Trump, but some Republicans just don’t know it yet. The failed GOP, the one that nominated John McCain and Mitt Romney for the Presidency, is dead.  Good riddance to it. The GOP survives this day only because Donald Trump rescued it in 2016. 

Some have suggested that if Joe Biden is sworn in that Donald Trump should start his own party.  Absolutely not!  Why go through the process building an entirely new party when instead he can clear out all the splinters of driftwood from the party of Abraham Lincoln?  There are, after all, far more Trump supporters than “traditional” GOP supporters.  Let the RINOs and squishes and the traitors in the Lincoln Project start their own party and see how much support they find. 

As part of this new reality, if the GOP wants the county to avoid a civil war or secession, wants the Republic to survive, or wants to avoid the United States of 2021 becoming the Weimar republic of 1933, they must do their Constitutional duty.  And that duty is to object to the electors of the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada when Congress meets on January 6^th. 

In that meeting Congress will count the votes of electors from the various states and certify the winner of the election who will then officially become President Elect.  During normal times this is a rubber stamp process that basically certifies what was clear from the first Tuesday in November. 

But this time it’s anything but normal.  The only thing clear about the first Tuesday in November is that a fraud was perpetrated on the American people.  As such, Congress has an obligation to put things right.  But sadly the Constitution does not give Congress a great deal of leeway in terms of actually doing anything at that point, at least not when the houses are divided between parties.  Objections can be raised about any state’s electors assuming it’s raised by one senator and one congressman.  The problem is however, throwing out electors takes the approval of both houses, which there is virtually zero chance of achieving with Democrats in charge of the House.

The solution can be found by looking back to Watergate.  Richard Nixon resigned because he knew he would likely be impeached and found guilty following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the tapes had to be released.  It was then that it became clear that a sufficient number of GOP senators would vote to convict and that fighting was likely futile.  And that was only because by that point a majority of Americans supported impeachment.  The entire process took two and a half years from the break in to his resignation. 

Sadly, we don’t have two and a half years today.  We have three weeks to convince Americans about the fact that this election was indeed stolen and convince a dozen Democrat members of the House to support the objections to the electors submitted by those five rouge states.

And how do we accomplish that, particularly with a media hell-bent on ignoring the fraud?  By focusing on getting the message out to voters in places where races were tight.  We already we know that 17% of Biden voters inswing states would have changed their votes had they known about various issuesthe media buried. What will those same constituents think when they are shown the proof of fraud as well as the news on Hunter Biden that now has miraculously reemerged?  By the President, the GOP and their various supporters in the media and on social media being laser focused on constituencies where House Democrats won with the slimmest of margins, the GOP can seek to impel those representatives to seriously consider the proof. 

One thing is particularly important to note about the “failures” the media triumphs about the Trump team in front of the courts thus far.  While the fraud allegations have gone nowhere, that doesn't mean they’re false.  By design courts are not set up to work fast. Cases typically take time to prepare in a way that is consistent with court procedures, which is often the opposite of common sense. There is an extraordinary amount of anecdotal evidence that something is amiss, but demonstrating that in a court at lightning speed is difficult. It's like trying to build the wing of a plane while you're taking off. Prosecutors can take months building a case against someone for relatively simple crimes, and this is anything but.

Take the Fulton County, GA video for example. We all saw the video. Officials have said that there was no deception going on, but every American watched reports on election night stating that the counting had been stopped due to a "water main break". That turned out to not be true. Officials say that no one was asked or told to leave but we see the observers leaving en masse basically at the same time and telling everyone that they were told work was done for the night, which it clearly wasn’t.  And the video looks to show that someone ran through a stack of ballots multiple times.  At the end of the day Americans (including Democrats) can see with their own eyes that something unusual is going on with those "suitcases".

Add to all of that the plethora of anecdotal evidence of fraud and the fact that Democrats have literally spent decades trying to loosen the safeguards for voting security, such as opposing Voter ID, pushing for mail in balloting, same day registration, etc and it most definitely looks like the Democrats have been up to something deceitful. Then there is the time and resources that they spent trying to destroy the President with the Russian collusion hoax and the impeachment... Taken together all of this suggests that the Democrats will stop at nothing, illegal or otherwise in order to get Trump out of Washington.

Getting to the bottom of that all takes time and time is not something the President's team has. Their track record has been less than stellar, but unlike Florida in 2000 there is not one issue in one locale to focus on. This involves a minimum of 5 states, dozens of counties and hundreds or thousands of precincts.  Our court system is not set up to adjudicate fraud on this scale overnight, or even within a few weeks. 

As such, the GOP has an obligation to assure the American people that their voices will be heard.  Congress has an obligation to ensure that the selection of the President of the United States is legal and done according to the rules set forth in the United States Constitution and not by the machinations of scheming partisans in the dead of night, malicious computer code and the intervention of the Chinese Communist Party.  

If GOP congressmen and senators cannot or will not challenge the legitimacy of the elections then they deserve to be sent out to pasture.  If they do not do their duty of saving the Republic, on January 20^th Donald Trump should announce that he is running for reelection in 2024 and that he will work to primary every single senator, congressman and governor who has not supported the cause.

Of course it may all be for naught if Biden is actually sworn in.  In 1933 Adolph Hitler was legally appointed Chancellor of Germany and immediately began the march towards tyranny.  The difference is, the Nazis hid their plans before they took power (at least as to the extent of the havoc they were prepared to wreak and their hatred for the Jews) while the Democrats have already told us what they are going to do:  Pack the Supreme Court, add four new Democrat senators, ban guns, defund the police and open the borders… All of this before they harness the Voting Rights Act to try and take control of the nation’s voting infrastructure.  

Examples abound from Putin to Chavez to Erdogan of dictators hiding their steel grip on power behind the fig leaf of “fair elections”.  If the GOP Senators and Representatives in Congress allow the blatant Democrat fraud in the 2020 elections to stand they should be primaried or impeached.  Either way, the GOP might never win another election and they will be responsible for the death of the Republic, whether it’s smothered in a web of partisan bureaucratic tyranny or it catches fire in a raging civil war. While the juxtaposition of Chamberlain and Churchill make for a vivid contrast of visions and actions that face Republicans, in reality it is Von Hindenburg they will be mimicking, as it was he who handed the reins of power to the Nazis. 

Having Survived Barack Obama, Back to Where the Tire Hits the Road...

I started writing this blog in 2009 after having written various random pieces over the years following 9/11. I started some months after Barack Obama was sworn in as President. I thought he was a clearly a socialist, perhaps a Communist, but most certainly un-American. One of the first signs there was a problem came prior to the election when an interview he had done years prior surfaced when he bemoaned that the Constitution was a “Charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf." Building on that he promised to “fundamentally transform the United States”. Finally, the promise of a black president didn’t quite play itself out the way some had expected. Some Americans felt that if we finally elected a black man to the presidency it would fundamentally demonstrate the United States was not the racist country so many had accused it of being. Not so much.

On the contrary. Many people started looking at that document Barack Obama saw as defective and started suggesting the entire country was built on a racist foundation. They began using 21st century mores to disparage the Founding Fathers and the Constitution they gave us over two centuries before. For them, an America that is not perfect is therefore evil and racist. Hence the name of this blog “Imperfect America”… drawing on the quote from Voltaire: “Perfect is the enemy of the good”. My first post was titled: “Racism: America’s Original Sin” essentially pointing out that the 3/5 Compromise did not at all mean what activists suggested it meant, and that in fact, had it not been for that compromise the Constitution might never have been ratified, blacks in the South might have been stuck in a country where slavery was fully accepted and a war the war that ended slavery might never have occurred. No, slaves would have been stuck in a nation that was not balanced by vociferous anti-slave voices as there were in the eventual United States. That was the start of this blog, but the areas of concern were many…

Over this past eight years I’ve pilloried Barack Obama, teacher’s unions, the BLM snake oil salesmen, Social Security Disability, Democrats, the media, big government, regulation, spineless Republicans and even Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The list of enemies of freedom are legion, and most of them – but not all – live in the DC metro area and control the country like an unchecked borg "assimilating" everything in its path. Government rarely passes on an opportunity to get involved and make matters worse, regardless of the area or the Constitutionality of its actions. The lust for power from bureaucrats and politicians seems to know no bounds… and that won’t necessarily change with Donald Trump in office.

But what I think will change is the danger that the country is in. For eight years I’ve lamented the fact that Barack Obama and the progressive left were seeking to turn the nation into a third world socialist paradise such as Venezuela or Greece or Cuba. In some respects they’ve succeed, but thankfully in some they have been stymied. They will no doubt continue to mobilize their comrades in the media and academia to advocate for their march for progressive fascism, but given that there are fewer elected Democrats today than there have been in almost a century, they may have a somewhat difficult road ahead. Indeed Barack Obama’s legacy just may end up being the decimation of the Democrat party… which would be a fitting "fundamental transformation".

Donald Trump may be many things, but one thing he is not is Barack Obama. He may be something of a big government liberal, but he’s not anti-American. He may be too tied to big business to appreciate the challenges of small businesses, but he’s not an absolute enemy of free markets. Put another way, after eight years of worrying that the United States is about to careen off the path of freedom and die on the march to a socialist / fascist progressive nirvana, today I look forward to a future where freedom, liberty and limited government have an opportunity to retake their place in the pantheon of ideas on which the country thrives. That doesn’t mean that there are no threats left or that Donald Trump will be the savior we need. Trump will, no doubt do many things that cause conservatives such as myself to bang our heads against a wall, but at the end of the day, for the first time in eight years we at least know that our president’s starting point is not that America is always wrong, that America is racist, that government is good and the private sector is evil. America may not be perfect, but with someone other than a progressive Democrat in the White House we at least have an opportunity to address real issues of consequence and perhaps set the stage for a revival of prosperity.

As such, while I will continue to write pieces for this blog from time to time, it is now time for me to focus on a few other things a bit closer to home where I might be able to have a more direct impact.

Thank you for reading…

The Trump Campaign for the White House: When Losing Means Winning

I don’t know what to think about Donald Trump… I was a big fan last year when he stormed the race with his vow to build a wall. I wasn’t a Trump supporter but I was very thankful that he put the issue of illegal immigration front and center of the race, exactly where it needed to be.

As the campaign wore on and contenders started dropping out I began to get a little worried but I was confident that Ted Cruz, the only real conservative in the race, would prevail. Little did I know that the dunces running the GOP would allow Democrats to pick their nominee. But alas, that’s exactly what happened and today we have a Democrat as the GOP nominee. And before someone mentions that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat for decades, yes, it’s true, but he not only became a Republican, but he became an actual conservative, which is the polar opposite of Donald Trump. Can you imagine Donald Trump coming up with this: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help”? Not likely. The truth is, with Trump we simply don’t know what’s behind the eyebrows…

On the one hand we know that Donald Trump has probably the biggest ego on the planet. Although born with a giant platinum spoon in his mouth, he has indeed taken that spoon and turned it into a full dining set. You may not like how he did it, but he did actually do it, all the while spending thirty years telling America he’s the greatest businessman on the planet. That’s hyperbole of course, but whatever the actual size of his bank account he’s done spectacularly well. But the question is, does this guy with the giant sized ego really want to be president?

On the one hand, it appears to be yes. He’s declared he’s running and he’s actually won the GOP nomination. The presidency is easily the most powerful job in the world, and if someone wanted to write a legacy worthy of the history books it’s a lot easier to do from the White House than it is from some random shiny tower on 5th Avenue.

But of course, with the potential to join the pantheon of names like Lincoln, FDR and Reagan comes the potential for abject failure too… think Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. While history has lionized the former, the latter have and will become poster children for failure or worse. And the problem for Donald Trump is that bankruptcy laws won’t allow him to simply wash his hands of such failures. He won’t be able to simply rename failure as success and ride off into the sunset to the praises of the chattering classes… he’s not, after all, Barack Obama.

But becoming a great president requires more than inspiring a cult following among a small segment of nominally Republican voters. It requires the successful running of the largest organization in the United States and managing the largest budget on the planet… all while keeping the economy from falling off a cliff and ideally keeping the country safe and ideally out of a war or wars. The government of the United States is far more complex than building a few buildings, signing a licensing agreement or convincing some gullible would be entrepreneurs into taking your real estate courses. And under the glare and scrutiny of a press salivating at the idea of chronicling the mistakes of any “GOP” politician, a bankruptcy filing or tax abatement won’t be able to hide Trump’s failures. Which may be why he reportedly offered to let John Kasich run domestic policy if he took the VP job. Is Trump scared he won’t be able to actually succeed? Trump may love to talk about – rather than actually disclose – his net worth, but he knows that his path to riches was a narrow one with lots of help and an ability to intimidate opponents into quiet submission. He also knows he will have no such luxury in the White House. There he will actually have to succeed rather than just talk about it… again, he’s no Barack Obama. Trying to engineer success on that scale might simply be too intimidating to really want the job.

Which might be why some suggest he’s not really in it to win it. To wit, rather than attacking his opponent Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump has spent the lion’s share of the post convention period attacking and alienating the very people he needs on his side in order to win like Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan. In addition, he has suffered self inflicted wounds such as occurred when he engaged in a war of words with a Gold Star family. Khan may have been wrong, but the optics of a man who got five deferments during Vietnam fighting with a family who sacrificed their son on the battlefield are lost on Trump. Is it possible that Trump got into the race on a lark and stayed in simply so he could prove that he could win? Now that he’s on the big stage and has to contemplate what it means to actually govern rather than just talk about it, would he rather spend the next three months doing the Donald Trump show rather than running a disciplined campaign because he knows he can chalk up his defeat to a rigged election?

Finally there are the allegations from Trump that the vote is going to be rigged against him. Is he setting himself up to lose, purposefully? Some believe that Trump is simply a Clinton plant. That is, frankly, easy to believe. Given the chameleon like fluidity with which he transformed from embracing a Clinton embracing Democrat to an ostensibly Clinton opposing Republican, it would be nothing to publically announce a mea culpa after her inauguration and go back to being a friend of Clinton and reap the windfall that comes with helping put her in the White House. He will have in one stroke eviscerated the GOP and put a longtime friend in the White House. From the perspective of a man who has made billions from crony capitalism, this is getting the keys to the kingdom.

Whether driven by a lack of desire or in coordination with the Democrat party, losing the presidential race offers Donald Trump the potential to put a stamp on history’s accounting of him. In addition to being the greatest businessman in history, he can become the aggrieved hero who wanted to save America but who was undermined by the entrenched political establishment. For a man who more than anything loves to tell tales about his exploits and to whom hyperbole is second nature, the allure of “What if” or “I would have” is that there is no limit to how great his accomplishments would have been if he’d only been given a fair chance... And the bonus is… he doesn’t actually have to accomplish anything and no one can ever prove him wrong. I’m not sure the prospect of actually taking the job, with the ancillary risks of failure and requirements for actual results can hold a candle to that…

Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night... Ted Cruz, The Constitution and Third Party Choices

I’ve never seen a train wreck, but I’m told they are somewhat difficult to turn away from if you see one occurring right in front of you. That was my experience two nights ago watching Donald Trump roll in Indiana and then Ted Cruz suspending his campaign.

What made the night almost surreal is that it came on the heels of Ted Cruz simply destroying Trump at a press conference earlier in the day. I couldn’t help but wonder if things might have turned out differently had Cruz not done the same a month before. I’m not sure it would have made a difference with the treacherous John Kasich still in the race, but one never knows.

So now we have it… A GOP nominee selected by Democrats, the media – and that includes the faux conservative media – and angry GOP voters not bright enough to recognize that while bluster and bombast might make for great reality TV, they rarely make for successful real world leaders, at least other than dictators. While the former two groups can be forgiven for trying to select the weakest challenger to their nominee – after all, that’s just good politics – the latter deserves a particular level of enmity as they profess anger at the establishment and then vote for someone who has spent his entire life canoodling with that very establishment.

Now the question facing many of us is whether or not to pull the lever for Trump or take the quixotic path of supporting a third party candidate. On the one hand it would almost be suicidal to do so – in terms of the pursuit of reviving the Constitution – as Clinton would certainly triumph, but on the other hand, the Constitution stands little chance of surviving regardless of whether Clinton or Trump is elected. The only reason to ever consider voting for Trump in the first place was his promise to build a wall. Given that he told the NY Times that he wouldn’t be building any walls, there is literally zero reason to bother pulling the lever for him.

Whether Clinton or Trump makes it into the White House, the freedoms that Americans used to cherish, free speech, free markets, gun ownership and limited government find themselves on the ash heap of history. Barack Obama started down the strongman path of extra constitutionality, and either Trump or Clinton would pick up that ball and run with it.

The 2016 election is simply lost. Absent some miracle that keeps Trump from the nomination, the 2016 will be the end of the Republican party as we know it, and potentially the Republic as we know it. So the question is, what are conservatives to do? What are those who value freedom and limited government to do? What are those who prefer Madison, Jefferson and Reagan to Marx and Castro and Obama to do? Do we take our lumps, swallow our pride and pull the lever for Trump simply because he’s representing the party ostensibly opposing the socialists? Do we sit out the election so that whichever candidate wins we can honestly say we had nothing to do with the consequences? Or do we do something else?

I’d suggest something else. Given that Donald spells the end of the GOP, why not use 2016 the way the Tea Party did in 2010… build something… but rather than hitching our wagon to the festering, corrupt and debauched Republican Party, build something far superior. Build a party that actually stands for something other than its own power. Build a party that champions real limited government, not the use of government to support big business and hinder small business. Build a party that advances the notion that prosperity is the result of free markets, not government intervention in favored industries. Build a party where free speech and free religion are the valued over the feelings of delicate flowers who are offended by practically everything. Build a party where hard work and individual achievement are valued and empowered rather than punished by confiscatory taxes and government social engineering.

Of course building such a party might guarantee a Hillary Clinton presidency. That’s true, but a Clinton presidency is the likely outcome of a contest against Donald Trump regardless. So be it. I once had a friend who told me she didn’t want to go to college because she was 27 and would be 31 when she graduated. I asked her how old she would be in 4 years if she didn’t go to college… Win or lose, a GOP party headed by Donald Trump is no longer a party that respects the Constitution, is no longer a party that respects free markets, is no longer a party that respects free speech and individual liberty. As such, we can choose to do nothing with the five months until November, or we can choose to do something that lays the foundation of a new party to stand up and challenge the big government GOP Democrat duopoly in 2018 and beyond. (Don't forget, the GOP itself was founded in 1854 but didn't win the White House until 1860.)  Granted, it will be an uphill battle, and given the track records of 3rd parties over the last century, it may even be a Sisyphean one, but at the end of the day the choices are clear. Stand by and watch as the foundations of your beloved country crumble, or choose to fight to save the Constitution and greatest republic the world has ever known. I hope Ted Cruz is listening and chooses not to go gently into that good night…

The coming Armageddon - Donald Trump may be the match, but the GOP set the kindling...

Absent a political earthquake, Donald Trump will be the GOP’s nominee for President of the United States. It is possible that he won’t, but the odds are long. His nomination will set the nation on a disastrous course that is only partly – and a small part at that – of his making.

When Donald Trump wins the nomination the $2 billion of free media he has received thus far will turn against him. If Mittens Romney thought he was portrayed as a monster just wait until the lefty media gets done with the Dean of Trump University. It will be an unmitigated bloodbath. And, frankly, it doesn’t matter who shows up on the left. Whether it’s Hillary Clinton or, in the event she’s already been indicted, Bernie Sanders, it won’t matter. Left is left is left.

During the general campaign there will likely be riots across the country as socialists, Communists, anarchists and every other faction of the Democrat Party seek to eviscerate Donald Trump’s 1st Amendment rights. But unlike the 1968 riots which resulted in a decisive Nixon victory, 2016 will see the party of the rioters win, decisively. And they are likely to take the Senate with them and possibly the House.

From there things will go south… rapidly. Not only will there be no wall built, but the US southern border will basically disappear as the United States of America evolves into the United States of Latin America, just another failed state. The façade of budget restraint the GOP has been pretending to impose will be gone. Government spending will rocket beyond a quarter of GDP within a few years and keep growing beyond that. Taxes will become more complex as they rise precipitously. Regulation will strangle free markets. And China and Russia will assert themselves even more than they have against the obsequious Barack Obama. ISIS will thrive and will find greater success here at home. The American military will become a full blown social experiment and social program all rolled into one. And of course, political speech – at least the kind that utters anything against the regime or against global warming or for traditional marriage – will be essentially outlawed while political correctness will become the order of the day in schools, churches, offices and everywhere else, enforced by thugs empowered by an approving government…. And then to top it all off, regulations driven by the global warming hoax and socialist hubris will devastate the American economy, sending investment and jobs beyond our borders as government policies drag the world into a 2nd Great Depression, just as they did a century before.

And there won’t be a thing the GOP can do about it. Why? Because the party will be gone. Like a zombie its body may be around for a little while, but it will be gone. Conservatives, fed up with a quarter century of the GOP being nothing more than an extension of the Democrat party will bolt. The energy of the Tea Party from early on in the Obama presidency will rise like a Phoenix and will be far larger this time. Not only will it include conservatives, but it will include many – not all – of the Trump supporters who are angry and feel disenfranchised and marginalized by government and have been told their outsiders in their own county.

And make no mistake, as bad as things have gotten under an Obama with a supplicant GOP, they will only get worse under a Democrat president without even a faux opposition. And that means in every way… economically, militarily, culturally and perhaps most importantly, politically – in terms of how citizens deal with one another, particularly those with whom they disagree with.

It will take years for the Tea Party / marginalized citizen party to find its footing and make its mark as it will have to fight the GOP zombies who won’t have yet realized their party is dead. The question is, by the time the new entity finds its legs will the county have become Venezuela? Will there be an actual revolution between those who see that a bloated, unrestrained, rapacious government has become an enemy of freedom against those who see the redistributive and regulatory happy government as the central element of their lives? Or will it be possible to recover Benjamin Franklin’s Republic through Constitutional means? That’s a good question, because a Constitution is only as strong as the character of the citizens sworn to protect and defend it, and with Barack Obama we’ve only begun to see exactly what can happen when a man of the left – read anti-American – is given that duty.

A Donald Trump presidency will be the death of the Republican party. Good riddance!

It looks like Donald Trump may run the table towards Cleveland, or close to it. Although it may end up being a two man race after the SEC Primary – John Kasich doesn’t count and Ben Carson is irrelevant – it may end up being too late to matter.  So why would Donald Trump be the end of the Republican party? Because other than building a fence – which is important – it’s likely that not much will change…and things might even get a bit worse.

Trump is attracting the attention of millions of Americans from across the spectrum. Somehow he attracted the votes of tens of thousands of evangelicals in South Carolina while at the same time drawing attention from minorities and millennials and self professed “conservatives”. His numbers are actually increasing, having won 45% of the vote in Nevada, almost a 50% jump from South Carolina less than a week before.  As I said last week, Trump 2016 is like Obama 2008 in that he is, for his fans, an empty vessel into which they can pour their dreams. That’s great for him on the campaign trail, but it might not be such a good thing for the country when he’s in the White House.

All of the people who are flocking to Trump are doing so for what they read into his “Make America Great Again” slogan. (Rush again on Monday disingenuously claimed the slogan is somehow more substantive than “Hope and Change”… He’s wrong, it's not.) Trumpkins are understandably frustrated with a government that doesn’t work. They are frustrated with a government that is involved in too many things. They are frustrated with a government that seems unresponsive to their needs and demands.  They want a government that protects their individual freedoms.  Those are all real concerns… but the problem is, Donald Trump will not likely change much of that, and to the degree that he does, he may well do so unconstitutionally.

And that’s the rub, and that’s why the Republican party will be doomed by a successful Trump run for the White House. The Republican Party is on the ropes in the first place because its candidates run on conservative ideas and then run away from them once in office. Whether it’s vows to stop Obamacare or promises to cut spending, GOP voters vote for one thing and via the magic of Washington, they get something else. Most GOP voters are simply sick of it. That explains the Trump phenomena and the strength of Ted Cruz.

So how exactly does a Donald Trump presidency doom the GOP? Simple. Because a significant faction of the GOP voter base is ready to walk already – myself included - because the party has lost its way and become liberalism light, but because Ted Cruz is in the race many of us are at least hopeful that it’s possible to end up with an actual limited government conservative nominee and president. Another significant portion of the voters are looking for something different than the status quo… hence Trump. Together those groups make up half if not more of the party, and a Trump in the White House will not only not be conservative, he’ll likely not change much at all.

Change doesn’t come easy, particularly when you’re fighting a leviathan. And Washington is nothing if not a leviathan. It’s entrenched in almost every aspect of American life. It’s dysfunctional and provides money and services to millions of America's who have become fat and happy suckling on the nanny state teat. And don't forget the millions of well paid bureaucrats and supplicants doing the same.

Bobby Kennedy learned as Attorney General, that changing anything in Washington is almost impossible, and the leviathan of government is exponentially larger today than it was then. Even Ronald Reagan, who famously wanted to kill the Departments of Energy and Education, was stonewalled. And Washington is more entrenched now than it was then.

In order to change Washington one has to have a visceral hate for big government, because it won’t go away without a fight. There are too many people, on both ends of the government industrial complex who have vested interests in maintaining it as it is. Add to that the fact that Trump is a big government crony capitalist and you can see where this is going, or not, as the case might be. Sure, he’ll build a wall and rename Obamacare, but will he rein in the NLRB or the EPA or HUD?  Don’t count on it. Will he eliminate the Dept of Education or the CFPB or agriculture subsidies? Not likely. And perhaps most importantly, will he put a constitutionalist on the Supreme Court to replace Scalia? No chance.

And that’s why a Donald Trump presidency will be the death of the GOP. Nothing will change.  Washington will likely function very much the way it does now… only the people running it will have Rs by their names rather than Ds. Once Republican voters have their guy in the White House and nothing changes, the factions of the party that seek something other than go-along-to-get-along big government, crony capitalism, and the nanny state will have no choice but to form a third party.  Maybe it will be a conglomeration of Tea Party groups. Maybe it will be a amalgamation with the Libertarian Party. Maybe they go for the fence and create an entirely new party focused on limited government, free enterprise and individual freedom. Whatever it turns out to be, it’s happening because the Republican party no longer stands for anything but itself. In Donald Trump it has its man. Good riddance to it.

Barack Obama will go down in history as the most successful president since Abraham Lincoln...

The eight year reign of Barack Obama will go down as the most important in American history since Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln led the United States at the single most important decision point in its history. At stake was no less than the question of whether the country would continue as a single nation or would it split in two as Manifest Destiny was fulfilled. Would there be a largely agrarian, slaveholding Confederate States of America bordering on a largely industrial and free United States of America or would a single, free and economically mixed United States emerge? At no point in the subsequent century and a half did the United States ever face a more foundational question.

Six years into Barack Obama’s presidency - and looking with much trepidation at the “last” two - one can’t help but wonder what kind of a nation will emerge on the other side. “History” said Winston Churchill, “is written by the victors” and like it or not, Barack Obama is the victor. Not sure about that? Take a look at the latest capitulation by his supposed opposition, Boehner and McConnell, the GOP leaders of the House and the Senate, respectively. In what is only the most recent example of obsequiousness they have vociferously attacked their own base in order to allow Obama to continue with his patently unconstitutional amnesty.

And what is it that Barack Obama has done to merit such distinction? He has opened the Pandora’s Box of unprecedented, omnipresent, government intervention. And like the evils escaping from Pandora’s Box, once government intervention is put in place you can’t get rid of it. With Obamacare he decreed that the government can tell Americans what they must buy, for their own good. With his NLRB appointees and the nationalization of General Motors he has eviscerated private property rights. With his using the IRS to muzzle opposition and his FCC taking over the Internet, he has taken a sledgehammer to concept of free speech and free markets.

In addition, his regulatory bonanza and welfare policies have cut the legs out from the basic premise of hard work being the key to success in America. By making entrepreneurship and job creation more difficult and by providing a seemingly endless array of benefits, he has driven the labor participation rate down to levels not seen in four decades.

And of course it’s not just the laws. He has set black against white as he constantly invokes racism in places where it simply doesn’t apply. What’s more, he has essentially told black Americans, those who are at most risk of being victims of crime, that the police are their enemies. He has set the poor and middle class against the rich as he assails the successful as robber barons who earned their success on the backs of others.

The country was far from perfect when Barack Obama took office and you can make the argument that it was already heading in a troubling direction when he came along. But the difference is, unlike Abraham Lincoln, who sought to save the Union, Barack Obama set out to fundamentally transform it. And that he has… from a place where individual initiative was the key to overcoming challenges, achieving success and finding happiness to a place where the first instinct of many is to look for someone to blame for their lack of success or happiness, or to try and figure out which arm of government to look to provide them.

Combine that entitlement / victim mentality with a legion of regulatory diktats and unconstitutional decrees – that no one in power seems willing to fight – and you have a recipe for a banana republic where power is held by whoever bribes the largest number of people and creates scapegoats to fuel populist furor. And so it goes as a nation of giants transforms into a nation of beggars and a government limited by the Constitution becomes a one limited only by a president’s appetite.

No president in 150 years has changed America more. Not Roosevelt, not Kennedy, not FDR not Reagan. Such is the transformation Barack Obama promised and delivered. Most Americans won’t view it as success, but the left does. Therefore, if history is indeed written by the victor – or in this case by his lefty sycophants in the media – Barack Obama will go down as the most successful president since Abraham Lincoln. And at this point it might be useful to think of something Churchill’s enemy, Adolph Hitler, said: “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”