Why Palin and Limbaugh Are Supporting Trump: Fame and Legacy

It was with great disappointment that I listened a few days ago to Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump. I was similarly disappointed the next day when I heard Rush Limbaugh proffer simply that “Nationalism and populism have overtaken conservatism in terms of appeal.” It’s tough when you find that your heroes are less than they had led you to believe, or, perhaps, what you chose to believe…

I’ve been a big supporter of Sarah Palin since the moment I saw her walk out on the GOP stage in 2008. I penned a piece titled “Why I love Sarah Palin” discussing exactly why I found her so compelling. I liked the fact that she was not part of the establishment. That she had not spent her life in Washington. That she had lived a normal, imperfect life that many Americans could relate to… and, most of all, she was conservative and traveled around the country touting the virtues of a limited government.

I’ve been a big fan of Rush Limbaugh since I first heard him on the radio in 1990 while in college in Florida. Throughout that quarter century I’ve listened to Rush talk about conservative values, government overreach, media spin and endlessly skewer epic government failures both big and small. Although I don’t agree with him 100% of the time, it’s pretty damn close.

This week it became clear that both Palin and Limbaugh are paper conservative tigers. Both have shown that they are conservatives when it’s easy, when it’s convenient, but when the chips are down, they are consummate politicians. As I myself have written, I will vote for Trump over anyone that the donkey party produces, but until that becomes the choice, I’m not a Trump guy. He’s simply not a conservative in any sense of the word. From limited government to abortion to gun control to taxes, Donald Trump has no idea what a conservative is. And he doesn’t care.

There are however two different things going on here. The first is Palin, who with her ringing endorsement of Trump betrays the very principles she has spent eight years publicly espousing. The conclusion I’ve drawn is that she has become a Kim Kardashian wannabe. She became enamored with the fame, with the media spotlight, with the money, and she decided that a better avenue back to that spotlight was to jump on the Trump train, principles be damned. Donald is a rock star and Sarah is a groupie seeking to reignite her career in his shadow.

With Limbaugh it’s something different, although it’s kind of the same. He’s not overtly supporting Trump, and in fact he constantly says that if you want a rock solid conservative, Cruz is your man. Limbaugh of course doesn’t need Trump to shine. As a matter of fact, if Hillary or Bernie won his audience and fortune would probably increase. No, when he spends three hours simply “explaining” what’s going on with Trump is he’s feigning objectiveness while tacitly pushing him to the front of the stage. Which he has every right to do, as it’s his show… but then don’t waste our time whining about the GOP establishment never giving Americans a conservative to vote for.

Make no mistake, this is a choice. Limbaugh claims that he’s just “explaining” what’s going on, that he’s just reacting to the news cycle, but in reality he decides what goes on on his show. Guaranteed if he wanted to he could spend three hours talking about Iowa governor Terry Branstad’s attempt to crucify Cruz for opposing ethanol, and given it’s Rush it would be entertaining. But rather than do so, he spends days on end explaining why Americans find themselves entertained by a strangely coiffed professional entertainer. And why might he do this? Fear. Trump is the easy play. Trump is the fun play. And there’s no risk with him. If he loses, then he was just a clown that entertained people for a while. If he wins, well, great, a guy who’s not part of the establishment who will leave plenty of terrible government programs to skewer. But Cruz… he’s a real conservative. He’s the guy Limbaugh has been telling America we’ve needed for almost three decades. What happens if he gets the nomination and he loses? Then suddenly Limbaugh is shown to be wrong… he’s shown to have been a fool all these years when he was telling his audiences what Americans really want and need and weren’t getting from the GOP... a conservative nominee.

So there we have it, two giants of modern conservatism who, when the chips are down, decided to betray their principles. One for fame and the other for fear of losing his legacy. Unfortunately, after being a fan of both for years the only thing that comes to mind is a quote from P.T. Barnum: “There’s a sucker born every day.” My guess is more than a few other conservatives feel the same way.

Why I'm beginning to disagree with Sarah Palin about the impeachment of Barack Obama

I love Sarah Palin, but I’m beginning to disagree with her on impeachment.

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution says the following about impeachment: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. The House of Representatives has the sole power to impeach and the Senate the sole power to convict.

I’ve thought for some time that Barack Obama should be impeached. The IRS scandal alone was far worse than anything Richard Nixon ever did, or even thought of doing. Unfortunately we don’t thus far have a smoking gun. Benghazi may meet the threshold as well on the basis of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” in the dereliction of duty as Commander in Chief. Then of course there is the deluge of Obamacare violations. Repeatedly the law says one thing and Obama has done the opposite.

While I have no doubt Barack Obama deserves to be impeached, I’m no longer sure that he should be. It is most certain that the Republicans in the House could gather the votes to impeach.  The point of impeachment however is not impeachment... it's conviction.  Unfortunately however there is no way in hell that it would be possible today to get 67 votes for conviction in Senate. Former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards once said about his reelection prospects: "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy". Barack Obama might paraphrase that in reference to his conviction prospects in the Senate. Although I’m skeptical that even then the Senate would convict…

It’s not because I’m afraid he won’t get convicted that I no longer believe he should be impeached however. It’s because I no longer think it’s necessary. Why? Because Barack Obama is a lame duck. Not just lame in the traditional sense of presidents being lame in their second terms. But lame in the sense of being broken. Today his approval rating sits at 39%, the lowest of his presidency. While there seems to be a subset of Americans, about 40% of the population, who seem incapable of recognizing, or refusing to recognize incompetence when they see it, Barack Obama is making it much more difficult for those misguided souls to keep their heads in the sand. His incompetence and perfidy are becoming legion. Obamacare alone would make the case… and consumers will be livid when their subsidies evaporate. Then there’s the administration’s stonewalling in the IRS scandal investigation as more and more information emerges demonstrating its betrayal of our Constitution. Then there’s the chaos in Iraq and reversals in Afghanistan. His bludgeoning of Israel in its battle with Hamas. His impotent response to Vladimir Putin’s aggression and the shooting down of flight MH17. But perhaps most of all, Barack Obama’s betrayal of the American people can be seen in his efforts to “transform” the United States into a third world country by essentially eliminating our southern border while simultaneously inviting every Central American child to swim across the Rio Grande and become a Dreamer.

And that's the reason why Barack Obama should not be impeached. Because while the country and the world are in the grip of chaos and worse, he’s busy… playing golf. He’s attending fundraisers. He’s going on vacation and buying a $4.5 million home in Palm Springs. And Americans can see that. They see his indifferent attitude towards actually solving problems or leading, whether it’s the collapse of the border or the fires burning across the footprint of the Ottoman Empire. Even those predisposed to worship at the altar of Barack Obama can’t help but recognize his disinterest in the duties of actually governing. And that’s the point. To paraphrase Napoleon, When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, don’t interfere.

Were the GOP to impeach Barack Obama now they would not only be interfering with Barack Obama’s immolation of his legacy, they would be throwing him a life preserver. The debate would suddenly shift from the reality of Obama’s incompetence to the fiction that he is being persecuted because of his race. That is perhaps the only thing worse than the nation collapsing under Barack Obama’s stewardship… the nation collapsing under Barack Obama’s stewardship and no one paying attention to the fact that it’s Barack Obama who’s causing the collapse.

Now this calculation could change. If we find an IRS smoking gun with Obama’s prints on it that even hardcore leftists can’t ignore, then impeach him. Absent something like that however there is no reason to rescue Obama from the morass he has brought upon himself. Doing so won’t help the country and will only turn him into a victim and help obscure his reputation for posterity. And that would be the ultimate disaster as future generations would never see the abject failure that was the anti-American presidency of Barack Obama, but instead would read about the heroic legacy of a black man persecuted for his race who was never given a chance.

Tea Party vs. the GOP establishment - Begging for a brokered convention...

For much of the last three years, I, like so many others who were so despondent after the election of 2008, assumed that the election of 2012 was finally going to provide the American people with a real choice of philosophies.

On the one side you have President Obama and the progressive / fascist utopia. (Fascist in the economic sense – where private property remains, but government dictates its usage – rather than the Nazi anti-Semitic / nationalist sense.) This utopia is where government plays the role of caretaker of the nation, where government tells citizens what they can and can’t do with their property, what they must buy and where they must invest, where unions have the power to coerce both government officials and private corporations that pay their members salaries.

On the other side the Tea Party was going to make sure that for the first time in 30 years a conservative nominee would be the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. The platform would include radically smaller government, less intrusive government, and lower taxes coupled with a less complicated tax code – maybe even the Fair Tax – and a strict adherence to the 10th Amendment. Life was indeed going to be good again and prosperity would soon come roaring back.

Given the failure of everything progressive, from welfare to education to the USSR to practically the entire European continent, Americans would finally be given the choice between continuing down that well trod path to failure and a going down that forgotten path of economic liberty that was the foundation of American prosperity since the revolution.

Somehow, somewhere along the road leading to that fateful, Solomanic fork in the road, something went wrong. Not on the left. No, President Obama has indeed been as progressive as most of us feared, and in some cases far worse. Actually, the problem is on the right. Where many of us were hoping that the standard-bearer of the GOP would be a clean, if not perfect, conservative, increasingly it looks as if the nominee is going to be someone other than that.

In the one corner we have Mitt Romney who to this day refuses to renounce Romneycare, the Massachusetts disaster that spawned Obamacare. He also was an early supporter of cap and trade, was gullible on global warming, opposes a flat tax or the Fair Tax and shares an unhealthy affinity with Barack Obama for class warfare.

In the other corner we have Newt Gingrich, the guy who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi and told us to pressure our leaders to combat climate change. Although he finally admitted that was one of the stupidest things he ever did, there are other candidates for that title. He trashed Paul Ryan’s less than radical tax plan as “conservative social engineering”, supported the individual mandate in healthcare and now wants to harness local boards to determine which illegal immigrants should be allowed to pursue a “Path to legality”. I have to wonder how effective that might be in sanctuary cities around the country like San Francisco, Austin and Denver. As if all of that were not enough, after taking almost $2 million from Fannie & Freddie and praising their work and the GSE model itself, he now wants us to believe that the only thing he did for the money was tell them their businesses were going to fail. Really?

There are of course others in the race and they too are imperfect, but at least with Perry and Bachman you know they are true conservatives mostly dedicated to a smaller government. Unfortunately for the two of them, their campaigns barely register a pulse when it comes to the polls.

At the end of the day one has to ask, what happened to the Tea Party revolution? How is it possible that the two men leading the race for the 2012 GOP nomination are big government, crony capitalist chameleons who are far less inclined to upend the Washington applecart than work with the people driving it? Why are not the leading GOP candidates shouting from the rafters that they will radically slash government spending and regulation, that they will champion a flat tax and that they will impose a strict adherence to the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment?

Despite the best efforts of the media and the Democrats to paint the Tea Partiers as racist rubes and the Occupy Wall Streeters as noble sophisticates put upon by the evil capitalist system, the American people recognize the truth. The fact that the PR field is so heavily tilted towards OWS, yet citizens still have a more favorable view of the Tea Party, tells you everything the GOP needs to know about the coming election. If they would simply run a candidate who proudly articulates basic conservative principles, the next election would result in the country being freed from the tightening progressive noose around its neck. Without such a candidate, with just another standard-bearer Americans can’t distinguish from the big government GOP they’ve come to know, Barack Obama may indeed triumph.

With Gingrich and Romney sitting in the pole positions, I find myself pulling for a brokered convention that results in an opening for someone other than Frick and Frack to take the nomination. Someone like Sarah Palin, or even the forgetful but conservative Rick Perry. Sure that’s an unlikely scenario, but at this point the traditional route has brought us two paper tiger conservatives leading the pack. The Tea Partiers and the country deserve an opportunity to make a clear choice between progressivism and conservatism. Let’s hope that somehow the GOP can figure out how to give that to them. Otherwise it may be another four years of hoping for change.

Why I love Sarah Palin

I love Sarah Palin. There, I’ve said it. While I’ve never met her, that is beside the point.

What is right on point however is why I love her. Sarah Palin bleeds American. She is not American simply because of an accident of birth. Rather, she understands what makes America different; she believes that America is exceptional and knows what makes it so; she is passionately pro-American without being jingoistic; she is willing to fight for what she believes regardless of who’s lined up against her; she is willing to put her credibility and reputation on the line to help others who share her views. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, she is a normal, average, regular person.

Sarah Palin did not grow up rich or attend an Ivy League school. She did not spend her life in a courtroom extorting money from corporations or small businesses. She did not spend her life in an ivory tower or in an editorial room pontificating about how the world works in some fantasy universe where government regulations make everyone pure and everything perfect in every circumstance. No, she has lived a fairly normal life, one you might call working class.

I remember back in ’88 or ’92 someone asked George H.W. Bush if he knew the price of milk, and he didn’t. He was of course pilloried for being “out of touch” with the common man. (Frankly it doesn’t bother me at all that the VP or President of the United States doesn’t know the price of milk… let someone else buy the milk, I’d rather him focus on knowing how much of our money government is wasting!) Sarah Palin probably knows the price of a gallon of milk. More importantly, she understands America from where the tire hits the road. She started out her political career at the PTA because she wanted to improve the education her children were getting. From there she spent four years on the Wasilla city council and six years as mayor. Next she was appointed to chair the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission and later defeated the incumbent to become the Governor of Alaska. In every one of those endeavors Palin showed herself to be not only capable, but effective and successful as well. Indeed, the latter two positions found her fighting an Alaska version of Tammany Hall.

She has demonstrated a willingness to fight for what she believes in, even if it is within her own party. She defeated the Murkowski machine in Alaska and she stood side by side with tea party candidates across the country in 2010, often against the wishes of the entrenched GOP establishment. Christine O’Donnell may have been a flawed candidate, but at least the citizens of Delaware had a choice between two distinctly different paths rather than the choice between the liberal and more liberal paths they would have had with Chris Coons and Mike Castle. They may have chosen bigger government, but at least for a change they had a choice, and Sarah Palin helped give them one.

Sarah Palin is also average in another way. She is not polished – or at least she wasn’t when she burst upon the national stage. She is not slick. She does not have a sound bite sized answer at the ready in case she gets asked any questions. Just the opposite, actually, often you can see her crafting an answer on the spot. The interview with Katie Couric was indeed painful to watch. The truth however is that her less than stellar performance in that and other early interviews were not signs that she was a dolt as many suggested, but rather the consequence of being thrown onto the world’s biggest stage with the klieg lights on max. You might say she was… shell-shocked. Many people, including myself, wondered how she could not name a single newspaper she read regularly or give a coherent answer on the Middle East. Knowing the answers and delivering them in front of a world wide audience are two different things. (Example: say the alphabet using nouns to represent each letter: Apple, Barrel, Continent etc. Now imagine having to do it in 20 seconds in front of 1,000 people and your job rests on your success…) Her poor performance communicated more about her interview preparation than her qualification to be President. Indeed a week later she outperformed Joe Biden in their debate, and few lefties would argue he was unqualified to be President. Her early performances were those of someone whose persona was not forged in front of camera. I’ll take someone who is right on the issues but flubs an interview 10 times out of 10…

And the issues are where Sarah Palin shines. Like Ronald Reagan, she understands that government is the problem more often than the solution. She understands that low taxes and fiscal discipline are an absolute necessity as government has no money other than that which it takes from taxpayers. She understands that Barack Obama was right when he suggested the Constitution “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…” The difference is that to Obama and the left, that’s the problem whereas Sarah Palin understands that that is why the Constitution exists in the first place. She understands that an unconstrained government will continue to grow and usurp powers until eventually it strangles the life out of its citizens and our republic.

In addition to the issues, Sarah Palin seems to be made of steel. She has undergone a seemingly unending barrage of mocking and criticism to a degree that perhaps no other American politician has had to endure in modern times. Through it all however she has carried herself with grace, good humor and most importantly, she has understood that the issue is not her, it’s the country. The fact that she is willing to stand up and respond to the left – particularly the media – should not be seen as a symptom of being thin-skinned or even petty, but rather a desire to keep the focus where it should be, on policy and Constitutional government.

So the reasons I love Sarah Palin are thus: She knows what it will take to put the country back on solid economic footing. She’s a rabid Constitutionalist who will rein in the federal government. She will let American interests and the interests of the American people dictate American foreign policy rather than looking to international bodies for direction. She understands the importance of free markets, free trade and energy independence. She believes in American exceptionalism, and perhaps most of all, she understands that individual responsibility is the cornerstone of upon which character, community and country are built. Without that everything else collapses.

2012 is going to be the most important election in more than a century. Our nation has been shaken to its very foundations by an onslaught of government encroachment and unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility. In times like these, when those basic fundamental things that made America great in the first place are the very things being undermined, we would be lucky to have a ticket headed by someone who truly understands what it’s like to live and thrive as an average American, someone who didn’t spend most of her adult life in the insulated and unrealistic universe of liberalism consisting of courtrooms, college classrooms and the corridors of power that make up Washington D.C.